Giant quarterback Eli Manning got a lousy reception yesterday for a secret marketing deal with cash-strapped St. Vincent’s Medical Center that paid him at least $500,000 over the last three years.
After inquiries by The Post Sunday, Manning and the Greenwich Village hospital said they had canceled a $1 million pact that would have paid him $200,000 a year through 2014.
But as late as last December, Manning’s agent requested a $125,000 payment from St. Vincent’s that was months overdue, sources said.
The tardy check was finally sent to Manning’s firm, PWL Inc.
Both parties were hammered on WFAN sports radio yesterday.
“It’s just a bad job all around,” said Craig Carton, of the “Boomer and Carton in the Morning” show.
Carton said Manning should return the $500,000.
“If you want to do the right thing,” Carton said, “give the money back. That’s being a mensch.”
E-mailers to The Post blasted the arrangement.
“This is probably why they [St. Vincent’s] are going down to begin with . . . Eli should have returned all the money he took . . . and then dedicate himself to saving a MUCH NEEDED HOSPITAL!!! What a shlump!” one reader raged.
Another wrote, “As an employee of St. Vincent’s, who just took a 10% pay cut to ‘save St. Vincent’s,’ I am further disgusted at the Board who continue to act in such an irresponsible, unethical manner and then want employees to pay for their own stupidity, avarice and greed. They should all be forced to resign.”