Quiet Manningham makes noise on field

By Joe Scalzo

Despite off-field issues, the standout WR from Warren is poised for the pros.

In the spring of 2002, soon after Steve Arnold was hired to coach the varsity basketball team at Warren Harding, a shy freshman named Mario Manningham walked into his office and told Arnold he was going to quit football to focus on basketball.

For a guy liked Arnold, this would normally be really good news. Particularly at a football-crazy school like Harding. Particularly for a coach who’d only had the job for a few weeks. And particularly because Manningham was the type of player who makes first year coaches look really, really smart.

That’s what made Arnold’s response so interesting. He said no.

“He told me it would be best if I played both,” said Manningham in an e-mail interview on Wednesday. “How many 6-foot basketball players do you see in the NBA?

“He knew I had a better chance to play in the NFL.”

Added Arnold, “I said, ‘Listen, as much as I’d love to have you here full time, you’re going to make a lot of money playing football some day,’ We went back and forth for about a half-hour and finally he said, ‘Coach, whatever you say, I’ll do.’

“I said Mario, you go play football. Obviously, the rest is history.”

This is a story about a quiet kid who made noise with his ability, who worked his way up from a single parent home in Warren with his gifts and his guile to become a surefire NFL prospect. But it’s more complicated than that, because this is also a story about a man who made mistakes and whose past decisions may hurt his future.

But those things can wait a few minutes. Because there’s good here. And you don’t want the bad to overwhelm the good.

Mario Cashmere Manningham was born on May 25, 1986 in Warren, the oldest of three children to a single mother. His grandparents helped raise him — his grandfather, Gerald Simpson Sr., is one of his closest advisers — and the family remains very close.

Manningham’s athletic gifts were obvious at a young age — his uncle, Gerald Simpson Jr., played football at Pitt, so the bloodlines were there — and Arnold recalls watching him dominate his peers on the football field in junior high at East Middle School.

“He was an amazing talent,” Arnold said. “He was a fast, shifty tailback and they just tried to give him the ball and let him do his thing.”

Manningham was also a standout basketball player and by the time he entered high school, the stories about Manningham had spread through the building. But while sports came easy to him, schoolwork did not. A special education student, Manningham had to work extra hard in the classroom. He also was extremely quiet, which made things even tougher.

“Everyone had really high expectations for him,” said former Harding assistant Chris Scisciani, who taught at East Middle School and who was Manningham’s wide receiver coach his senior year. “I think everyone really realized what a special kid he was.”

After a freshman season that saw him score 26 touchdowns, Manningham joined the varsity as a sophomore and had his breakout game on a Saturday night in October against Division I power Massillon. He scored four touchdowns, including two on kick returns, to help the Raiders rally from a 10-point deficit. He immediately garnered the nickname “Super Mario” and it stuck.

Afterward, with a group of reporters clamoring for an interview, Coach Thom McDaniels instead sent out senior quarterback Mike Phillips.

“I think Thom was kind of protective like that for a lot of his players,” said Scisciani, now the head baseball coach at Streetsboro High.

“I think he did a really good job bringing him along.”

Over the next two years, Manningham emerged as a big-play threat who was capable of taking over a game, but also capable of disappearing from it. Some of that was due to schemes — he often faced double teams — but some of it was also due to inconsistency. For all his talent, he’s always been an athlete who needed prodding to bring out his potential.

“Mario and I had a really good relationship — we only got into it once,” said Scisciani. “It was at practice one day his senior year and it was because I thought he wasn’t working as hard as he could have been.

“When that happens, the other players see Mario not working hard and think they don’t have to work hard. But to be honest, that didn’t happen a lot. I’ve said this a lot, he made my job easy. There are certain things that he does that you just can’t teach.”

Manningham said he grew up over those four years and feels fortunate to have had good role models as coaches.

“They teach you how to be a young man,” he said. “You’re not a man in high school. They teach you to go to class, do your homework and be a young man.”

Maningham’s high school highlight came his senior year against Cleveland Glenville. Matched up against Ohio State recruit Jamario O’Neal, Manningham caught seven passes for 251 yards and three touchdowns.

But he saved his biggest play for defense. With Harding trailing by two with two minutes left, Glenville had the ball at midfield and seemed to have the game won.

“All Glenville had to do was run out the clock,” Scisciani said. “We put him in at cornerback for one play and they threw a screen pass. He picked it off and took it to the house.

“That made my jaw drop.”

Added Harding athletic director Paul Trina, “Sometimes I don’t know if he’s aware of how good he is.”

Trina remembers Manningham as a “fun-loving kid,” the type of student who needed pushed but who came to class, got his grades and didn’t cause trouble.

“He was a good kid to be around,” Trina said. “We had to work with him academically, but my impression was that when he was here, he put forth a good effort and did what he had to do.”

Manningham was recruited by most of the region’s major colleges, including Ohio State, but chose to attend Michigan at least in part because one of his teammates, Prescott Burgess, was there. Arnold was also a Michigan man — he bristles when people assume he delivered Manningham to Ann Arbor, saying, “Mario chose the best situation for him” — and only missed a handful of his home games during his three-year career.

“Michigan was a good place for him,” Arnold said. “He was able to come home, sometimes after games and in the summer and be with his family.”

The main question about Manningham entering college wasn’t about his ability but his challenges in the classroom and, particularly, with the media. Manningham doesn’t consider himself shy — “I’m not shy, I’m just not the guy that always put himself in front of the camera,” he said — but he’s often described as quiet and wary of strangers.

“He’s humble; that’s the best way to describe him,” said Arnold. “And he doesn’t trust a lot of people, which is good in same ways, especially in the world where he’s indoctrinated.”

Once at Michigan, Manningham didn’t take long to introduce himself to football fans, scoring a touchdown against Notre Dame on his first career reception, which Manningham calls the highlight of his college career.

Then, on Oct. 14, 2005, the 3-3 Wolverines played host to undefeated Penn State. Trailing 25-21 on the game’s final play and 110,000 crazy fans in the stands, Manningham broke open on a slant to the middle of the end zone and caught a 10-yard, game-winning touchdown pass. It was the only loss that season for the Nittany Lions, who finished No. 3 in the country.

Manningham finished the year with 27 catches for 443 yards and six TDs, then caught 38 passes for 703 yards and nine TDs as a sophomore despite missing four games with a torn meniscus and torn medial collateral ligament.

Manningham had his breakout season last fall, catching 72 passes for 1,174 yards and 19 TDs but dropped several passes in the regular season finale against Ohio State. Weeks later, he announced his decision to bypass his senior season and enter the draft. The decision was due in part to economics — he was projected as a first-round pick at the time — and due to the program’s transition. Coach Lloyd Carr retired and senior standouts like Chad Henne and Mike Hart were leaving.

“I enjoyed Michigan but with the coaching change and after talking to my family I decided this was the right time,” he said.

Manningham consulted Arnold about the decision, who told him he needed to do what was best for his family. He also emphasized the need to go back and get his degree.

“The thing I told him was that whatever decision he made, he shouldn’t think twice,” said Arnold, who keeps in close contact with Manningham. “If you decide to come out, don’t look back. If you decide to stay, don’t look back.

“You’re talking about a livelihood. Once you get to that point, when you’re a potential first-round pick, that’s a lot of money. I think he made the decision that was best for him.”

Manningham finished his college career on a high note, combining for 131 yards rushing and receiving and a touchdown in an upset win over Florida in the Capital One Bowl.

Then the bad stuff began.

Manningham struggled at the NFL Combine in February, in interviews (where his quiet personality didn’t endear him to NFL scouts), on the Wonderlic test (which measures intelligence) and on the turf, where he ran a disappointing 4.59 in the 40-yard dash.

After the combine, Manningham signed with Yee & Dubin Sports, LLC, which immediately set about improving his plummeting stock. His agent encouraged him to come clean about twice testing positive for marijuana in college — Manningham had previously denied the positive tests — and showed up in better shape and better prepared at Michigan’s Pro Day, where he ran a blazing 4.38 in both the 40 and the shuttle run.

Still, the damage was done. Several teams took Manningham off their draft boards and his value now ranges from first round to third round.

“The slide started at the combine,” said ESPN draft analyst Mel Kiper in a recent conference call with reporters. “When you run a 4.6 and you’re a receiver who had some drops at Michigan with a little inconsistency at times … on the heels of that issue, that is why Manningham’s days of being a first-round pick ended at the combine.

“At the end of the day I’d say Manningham goes second or third round.”

Still, Manningham has rehabilitated his image in recent weeks and is poised to become the latest Harding player to advance to the NFL, joining the likes of Burgess (drafted by the Ravens last year), Korey Stringer and Paul Warfield, among others. His former teammate, Antwaun Molden, also should be picked this weekend.

“It’s good to know that we have a strong football community at Harding and it won’t stop with me,” Manningham said. “There are a lot of good players coming up.”

Those success stories only make Trina’s job easier. He can point to guys like Manningham, Burgess and Molden when giving advice to younger players. And he can also point to guys like Maurice Clarett (who was cut in training camp by the Broncos three years ago) or Omar Provitt (a standout receiver on Harding’s state championship team in 1990) as players who had pro potential and instead chose the wrong path.

“Kids listen a little harder when it’s an NFL player talking,” said Trina. “These guys are a point of reference for us. We can tell kids, ‘They came from the same environment and made the right decision and put the work in.’

“Then you have other stories, where guys made the wrong decisions. What we try to do is provide our young people with the education they need. We’re very proud when one of our players becomes a success.”

Will Manningham be one of those stories? It’s up to him. His talent isn’t the issue. Never was.

But success in the NFL isn’t just about talent. It’s about dedication and maturity and making the right choices. Manningham hasn’t always done that in the past.

He’ll have to in the future.

“When you speak about the people who made it, they made it because of their high character,” said Trina. “You have to put the work in. You have to walk away from certain people. You have to make the right choices.”

Will he do that? Hard to say.

One thing’s for certain — Manningham isn’t entering this weekend scared.

“I’m not nervous,” he said. “I’m excited to know where I will be playing and I’m ready to make plays.”

scalzo@vindy.com