Ellen Manning isn’t in the spotlight anywhere as much as her husband Cooper or his more famous brothers Peyton and Eli, but her son and Texas quarterback Arch Manning has credited his mother for his speed. Now, mother and son will star in a new commercial for Humann.
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AUSTIN — In terms of celebrity and exposure, Ellen Manning may be the least of the Manning family.
Which is just the way the feisty, strong-willed 57-year-old mother of Arch Manning wanted it.
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But don’t think just because she prefers to lead her life in the shadows of the most celebrated family in all of college and pro football that she’s just simply the mother of talent.
That’s because the extroverted wife of Cooper Manning and mother of three is loaded with talent.
She’ll showcase some of her skills by revealing her acting chops with her famous son Arch in a national commercial touting health and supplement company Humann’s partnership with the University of Texas.
The 32-second spot will air this weekend in conjunction with the Longhorns’ rivalry game with Oklahoma on Saturday afternoon at the Cotton Bowl and run through the end of the year.
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“It was the first chance I’ve ever had to do something like that with my mom, and it was a lot of fun,” Arch said. “She was awesome. Definitely a natural in front of the camera! Hopefully we’ll get to do something like it again.”
Because it supports a good cause and promotes a health care product with cardiovascular benefits that both she and Arch use, she’s all-in on this venture.
“Arch usually does everything with Coop,” Ellen said in a rare interview recently. “They do the Warby Parker and some other stuff. He loves it, and he’s funny and all that. Coop’s a whore for the camera. So I kind of take the backseat.”
Well, she can kiss that goodbye because she will be front and center with her oldest son in a spot about serving SuperBeets Heart Chews at a tailgating party filmed at Royal-Memorial Stadium on a ridiculously hot August day. There’s even a funny jersey swap involving Christopher Davis, Humann’s chief cardiologist who founded Reveal Vitality in Sarasota, Fla.
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AnnMarie Kocher, president and co-founder of Humann along with her husband Joel, relished the opportunity to partner with the Mannings to send a message to women who too often neglect their self-care. As a mother with seven grandkids, she wanted Ellen to help tell their story.
“Women are always the buyers for their families,” Kocher said. “They take care of their families. They multi-task. Yet they typically don’t take care of themselves. I was very guilty of that myself before we started this company. It actually has tremendous adverse affects on women and silently and earlier than men, so people don’t even realize there’s women out there at much greater risk than men.”
Kocher was drawn to the Mannings after she heard an interview Arch gave when he credited his mother with bestowing him with his speed. “It just touched my heart.”
Ellen Manning, a former volleyball standout and lawyer, shares her own story and a message about women’s health in a new commercial for Humann with her son Arch, better known as Texas’ QB.
Courtesy Humann
Ellen Manning isn’t used to the limelight, but she’s no stranger to sports. That was just one of her many talents.
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She was a terrific volleyball player, playing middle blocker and winning a state championship for the Academy of Sacred Heart and getting inducted into that school’s hall of fame in 2015.
She was offered college scholarships to continue playing but chose not to play. Well, her father arranged a tryout for her at Virginia, and she made the team but quit two days later. “I discovered that the fraternity scene was a little bit more fun than getting up at six in the morning for a three-mile run. So I hung up my knee pads.”
She worked as a civil defense attorney for a New Orleans law firm for six years.
And she was actually a thespian in high school.
She sang in “Godspell.” She acted in plays like “Picnic” and the musical “The Fantasticks.”
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Like more than half of the 550 Longhorn athletes, Arch has used the product SuperBeets since arriving in Austin. He regularly uses it in powder form 15 minutes before a game or practice. Ellen has incorporated it into her daily regimen as well about a year ago to enhance her energy level.
Football coach Steve Sarkisian has said he uses the product. So does Jerritt Elliott and his volleyball players.
“All of them,” Elliott said.
Joel Kocher is a former athlete who played junior college basketball at Daytona Beach College, and AnnMarie was once the No. 2-ranked tennis player in Florida as a high school senior. All three of their sons are athletes. One, Michael, was a golfer at Texas before transferring to Purdue.
Joel Kocher filmed a sequence for Humann with two-time Women’s College World Series Most Outstanding Pitcher Teagan Kavan in which he batted against her. Or attempted to.
“I kept hearing about the velocity of softball pitchers,” Joel said. “I wanted to experience it myself. I wanted her to bring the heat. Oh my God.”
She threw him three pitches, best he could remember. He wasn’t sure he even saw them.
Kocher’s also gone to Texas women’s basketball practices and took shots with then-Longhorn guard Rori Harmon. He’s yet to stand in the pocket and experience being sacked by Colin Simmons because, well, he is interested in maintaining his health.
Humann sells its products to support healthy blood pressure, improve circulation and lower cholesterol to more than 2,000 colleges and pro teams across all sports.
As part of a multi-year partnership with Texas paying the school “high seven figures,” the company’s logo has been added to all Longhorn playing surfaces from Royal-Memorial Stadium to Disch-Falk Field. Humann proudly claims it’s one of the only known health service industry companies to team up with a college athletic department.
“This was like the game-changer,” Joel said. “But it could have been State Farm or a bank. It’s my understanding that most schools are literally putting a different name on every playing surface. Two have insurance logos. Georgia promotes Delta Airlines. Vanderbilt has an insurance company. Arkansas has two names on its field — WalMart and Tyson Foods.”
Texas also sports Truist’s logo as its official bank sponsor.
Ellen Manning at first shrugged off the project when she was first approached.
“I was like, I don’t need the attention. I’m good,” she said. “I’m the mom behind the scenes, and I sort of forgot about it.”
When Humann approached her again, she relented.
“I’m to the point where if I go to lunch with my girlfriends, the two topics we discuss ad nauseam are menopause and supplements,” Ellen said. “Honestly, I just feel like it gives me a lot of energy, and I just feel better.”
Arch’s mug can be frequently seen in national ads and has long been known for his dry, deadpan sense of humor and funny wit when he chooses to share it.
He was asked Monday about his promos for Warby Parker eyeglasses, and he took it in stride.
“It’s a great question. I think my Warby Parker glasses really help my vision,” he said in his official spokesman-like tone.
So how did Arch rate his mom’s acting?
“Actually, Arch was very surprised at how well I did,” Ellen said, chuckling. “And I was a little bit offended.”
Arch has befriended local acting legend Matthew McConaughey. Ellen said he has “sneaked over” to Mr. All Right’s house for an occasional dinner to escape the fishbowl existence he’s survived. He’s tossed the football around with McConaughey’s kids.
“That’s just a little bit of normalcy for him,” Ellen said.
For a long time, the Mannings appreciated that the world of Peyton and Eli Manning hadn’t engulfed them as well.
“We would always look at each other and say thank goodness we’re on the fringe of all that,” she said. “We get to go the Super Bowls and cheer and fly on the private planes, but that’s not us. We’d come back to New Orleans and we are normal, and then all of a sudden, this one kid kicks us into the center of the spotlight, and it’s been an adjustment. I think our skin gets thicker by the week. I’m very proud of how Arch has handled this.”
Arch has tried to detach himself from the constant exposure. He’s logged off social media platforms. He’s tried not to read much about himself.
That said, he is thrust continually into the limelight whether he’s labeled the biggest flop in college football by The Athletic or he’s ridiculed for laughing about a fake AI video and had to apologize.
Ellen called the uproar over Arch’s reaction to the fake video that showed Sarkisian slapping Holly Rowe “horrible,” but didn’t want to elaborate.
“Everybody has a platform, and not everybody’s nice,” she said. “And none of it matters honestly. That one (calling him a flop) hurt, but I think the backlash (supporting Arch) was nice.”
Ellen acknowledge’s she’s much more emotive than her husband when it comes to watching Arch perform.
“I’m definitely the more vocal and emotional watcher,” she said. “Coop tends to get real quiet and nervous. Head-in-his-hands type of thing. And I go ‘You can’t do that. The camera’s on you. You have to smile.’ ‘
Ellen repeated an oft-mentioned incident when Arch once said he wanted to be a really good football player but didn’t want to be famous. His brother, Heid, a former high school tight end who is a junior business major at Texas, said, “Well, then keep your helmet on the whole time. Then nobody will know who you are.”
Pending reviews of her acting, she doesn’t think she and Cooper plan to move to Hollywood any time soon to pursue an acting career full-time.
“We’ve had many opportunities to move to Hollywood with Coop,” she said, “and we’ve turned them all down.”
The commercial spot may have whet her appetite a bit, but there are no current plans for a second.
“No. I’m going to have to fight Coop over the microphone,” Ellen said. “But it’s fun for me to do something with Arch. If nothing else, then kind of for posterity’s sake. We’ll look back at this and have a chuckle that we did this when he was in college.”