GLENDALE, Arizona. Concerned about the risk of career-ending injuries, former pro quarterback Archie Manning today announced that his sons Peyton and Eli would retire from football and stand at stud for sports-crazy parents who want to produce future signal callers from his proven bloodline.
"I get the blonde."
"I don't want my boys to get sacked like Joe Theismann and have to be put down to the role of television color commentator," Manning said. "They can make just as much money servicing broodmares--I mean housewives--all over the country and never throw another interception."
"I'm sorry Joe--we're going to have to put you to sleep."
The market for athletic stud services is young, but equine syndicators estimate that it could become a billion-dollar business in just a few years. "People are willing to pay good money to get sperm from Nobel Prize winners," said Blakemore Jones of Kentucky's Post Time Thoroughbreds. "Which would you rather have--a kid who's an NFL quarterback or one who's a gloomy Norwegian novelist?"
Sigrid Undset, Gloomy Norwegian Novelist, 1928 Nobel Prize Winner in Literature
Following the New York Giants' victory over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII, the Mannings are the first brothers to win back-to-back professional football championships, and their market price is probably at its peak. Otto Graham led the Cleveland Browns to the championship of the All-America Football Conference in 1948, the year after his mother served as the team's signal caller.
Otto Graham: "Aw, Mom--do I have to run the naked bootleg?"
The Manning brothers say they won't mind leaving football behind for the bordello. "You ever seen Dwight Freeney?" asked Eli Manning, referring to his brother's pass-rushing teammate. "One missed block and that guy tears me apart like a half-price bucket of chicken wings."
In related news, eligible women across the country tore down their Tom Brady with goat posters in droves, recycling them so that the paper can be used to make posters of the Manning brothers shirtless and holding their Lombardi trophies.
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
