When Arch Manning unexpectedly committed to the Texas Longhorns and head coach Steve Sarkisian during the summer of 2022, in the wake of Sarkisian’s 5-7 debut season on the Forty Acres, the son of Cooper and grandson of Archie wasn’t the first member of his family to consider playing football in burnt orange and white.

One of the numerous profiles of Arch Manning published ahead of his first game as the starting quarterback for the Longhorns on Saturday in Columbus against the Buckeyes, written by ESPN, provides a unique if not previously unreported perspective on the recruitments of Cooper and Peyton by Texas.

Both occurred during the John Mackovic era, revealing Mackovic’s absurdist comedy of errors with each of the brothers.

As Mackovic took over a scuffling Texas program in during Cooper’s recruitment, Longhorns football was mired in extended period of mediocrity that started in earnest when Darrell K Royal’s replacement, his former offensive coordinator Fred Akers, left for the Boilermarkers when the 1986 season resulted in the program’s first losing record in 30 years.

The replacement for Akers was just as familiar to the Forty Acres — former defensive coordinator David McWilliams, the architect of the elite units under Akers that nearly vaulted Texas to its first national title in the post-Royal era.

Returning to Austin after a 7-4 season at Texas Tech in his head coaching debut, McWilliams went 16-19 over his first three seasons. A 10-2 surge that ended in a loss in the Cotton Bowl wasn’t enough to save McWilliams from a 5-6 season the following year, during which he extended an offer to highly-regarded New Orleans (La.) Isidore Newman wide receiver Cooper Manning, slightly taller than Archie and possessed of similar if not better athleticism.

Texas hired John Makovic from Illinois to replace McWilliams for the 1992 season, a coach whose only real success over seven seasons in the lead role — a 10-2 record with the Illini in 1989 — was succeeded by diminishing returns in 8-5 and 6-5 seasons.

In the great wisdom acquired by Mackovic over the course of those largely mediocre campaigns, the first-year Longhorns head coach decided that an optimal recruiting strategy for the Texas program was to pull the offer from Archie Manning’s eldest son — more than worthy enough for it in his own right — with no apparent consideration for the relationship with a family that had two promising quarterbacks coming up behind Cooper.

Despite the slight towards Cooper from Mackovic, Peyton was still willing to consider Texas:

Before his senior year, Peyton asked Archie to drive him to schools he wanted to see on unofficial visits. They gave Texas another look and set it up with Mackovic. When the pair got to Austin, Archie said, Mackovic was nowhere to be found. Instead, they met with offensive coordinator Gene Dahlquist, who didn’t even know they were coming.

Peyton asked Dahlquist who else the Longhorns were recruiting and asked if they could watch some film. So the Texas OC, Archie and Peyton watched high school film of other quarterbacks.

“Peyton said, ‘Coach, how do I stack up?’” Archie recalled. “He said, ‘You’re definitely in our top 12.’”

Even beyond the absolute unprofessionalism of Mackovic to blow off a recruit like Peyton Manning, through whatever blend of malfeasance produced it, Dahlquist’s dog-shit evaluation is almost beyond belief until one considers his subsequent trajectory after failing as Mackovic’s offensive coordinator was one season as the passing game coordinator and quarterbacks coach at UNLV to coaching stints with the Scottish Claymores, Omaha Nighthawks, Winnipeg Blue Bombers, and Pioneros de Querétaro.

That’s going out with a fitting whimper.

“Cooper never held it against them,” Archie told ESPN. “Peyton never forgot that. Anybody that knows Peyton knows that he doesn’t forget.”

And that’s fair, as Mack Brown would say.

Mackovic, having ruined any chance of changing his program’s trajectory by landing a Manning or two, managed to take a slow journey to 10-2 in his fourth season before the same diminished returns as at Illinois resulted in his termination after a 4-7 campaign in 1997 and led to Brown’s much more successful tenure.

Brown’s success doesn’t reduce the tragedy of Mackovic somehow making the worst possible decisions with two Mannings, but Mackovic’s mistakes do put into perspective Sarkisian’s accomplishments with Arch and the Texas program — earning Arch’s trust as a result and maintaining it over two seasons as the backup because the program trajectory was exactly on line with Arch’s hopes to resurrect the Longhorns program from another period of languidity in another legendary head coach’s wake.

If it wasn’t a truism during the mid-90s, it should be now — don’t actively fumble whatever Manning bag comes your way.