Just an extremely ‘70s picture of Archie Manning working out or something

This is a very important newsflash, some 40 or so years after the fact. We need to admire this EXTREMELY ‘70s photograph of Archie Manning posing — post-workout, natch — in the world’s least effective shark cage. To wit:

We have MANY QUESTIONS. Most importantly, WHY IS THIS PIC NOT IN OUR PHOTO EDITOR TOOL, SB NATION? LIKE, WHAT THE HELL? Second, and perhaps most salient here: JUST WHAT THE SHIT IS HE WEARING, SUCH AS HE’S WEARING ANYTHING AT ALL? These shorts have seen more vintage marathons than years you or I have been alive. These shorts are doing the bare minimum and immediately fell off his frail, pasty waste immediately after this photoshoot. ALSO: they’re clearly higher than Archie’s normal shorts line, so, like, he elected to go with even shorter shorts for this particular occasion?

“You think this is goofy? Wait ‘til you get a load of my progeny.”

Seriously, this picture is unbelievable. He has hair that, y’know, still has color. His expression sits somewhere between existential dread and doe-eyed, dubious questioning at the world. Archie here was kicked out of the bully fraternity in Revenge of the Nerds for being too much like the nerds. He was happily accepted into the latter’s ranks, then became an antifa socialist. He wrote a scathing critique of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital on the grounds that it didn’t go far enough.

Archie is semi-athletic Larry David, but he finished third in the Heisman voting in 1970.