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PROVO — Two legendary quarterbacks hiked up Y Mountain in Provo and had a conversation.
No, that's not the beginning of a badly placed dad joke; that actually happened this summer at BYU in Provo, between two-time Super Bowl winning quarterback Eli Manning and two-time Davey O'Brien and Heisman Trophy winning legend Ty Detmer.
Along the way, "Sherpa Ty" helped explain how the Cougars earned a reputation as "Quarterback U" by the time the Texas-born signal caller arrived in Provo from 1987-91.
In the episode, an advanced copy of which was provided to KSL.com by the Manning-owned Omaha Productions before it debuts on ESPN+, Manning takes a walk up the mountain with Detmer, rings the Victory Bell outside the Marriott Center with Cosmo, and sits down with Jim McMahon at LaVell Edwards Stadium.
After his hike with Detmer, the former Ole Miss star and New York Giants standout, and one of three Manning brothers of NFL fame alongside older brothers Cooper and Peyton, spoke with enigmatic star quarterback McMahon about the Roy High alum's visit to BYU and what kept him in Provo for five years.
But during Manning's conversation with Detmer, the QB duo talked about the legendary BYU-Miami series in the early 1990s, the record-setting season of 1991, and why a non-Latter-day Saint signal caller (at the time) from Texas went to college in Utah.
"We threw it a little bit in high school; my dad was the coach. Back then, not many teams threw the ball," said Detmer, who later converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "I started looking, and BYU had just won the national championship in 1984. It just really piqued my interest, and I started learning a little bit about it."
As Detmer took Manning on a climb up Provo's iconic Y Mountain, he recounted the history of "Quarterback U" along the way. Any BYU freshman who has made the trek across eight or so switchbacks that sit over Utah Valley can empathize with the experience, and Manning's experience was no-less filled with jokes and quirky one-liners as the NFL champion acclimatized to the thin air of the Wasatch Mountains.
At one point in the climb, Detmer turned to Manning and urged him upward, saying that "the view is a slice of heaven."
"Yeah," Manning quipped back, "but getting there is hell."
From there, Manning met up with BYU Hall of Famer McMahon at LaVell Edwards Stadium, where the Roy High graduate reminisced on his bad boy image and the beginnings of his headband trend, the rise of national championship-winning quarterback Robbie Bosco and successor Steve Young, and the famous "Miracle Bowl" comeback against SMU in 1980.
But his football career began as a punter, McMahon shared.
"I just wanted to make the team any way I could. I could always kick the ball, so I made varsity as a punter," he explained. "Luckily, we didn't have to punt too much. We didn't have a whole lot of fourth downs back then.
"But then I was the third-team QB, so I got to learn about the offense my freshman year. … I didn't want to be just the punter; I wanted to be the guy with the ball in my hands."
Manning also asked the hard-hitting question: On a campus with an honor code that prohibits alcohol, tobacco, tea, coffee and premarital sex, how did McMahon — whose image at the time was not always congruent with the school's code of conduct — last as long as he did?
McMahon laughed, saying he met with Edwards every Monday morning for five years, and explained how he did most of his cultural perusing at off-campus events away from Provo.
"I was stealth before stealth technology came in," McMahon said.
The entire episode of "Eli's Places" begins streaming Wednesday on ESPN+.
