Over the
long Memorial Day weekend, several sports outlets reported that Johnny Manziel
vacationed in Las Vegas for the holiday.
A photo of the new Cleveland Brown QB (third string, remember – that’s
why they drafted him in the first round) and New England Patriot’s oft injured
TE Rob Gronkowski, poolside, surrounded by bikini glad young women, swirled
around the Twittersphere, causing many a pundit to ponder how Manziel could be
so audacious.
Well, Manziel is 21. He’ll be 22 in December. It’s legal for him to drink. It’s legal for him to gamble. I think it’s legal to hang out at a pool with
young women in bikinis, although I have no firsthand knowledge of any such
thing, as I didn’t have a copyrighted nickname to go with serious bank when I
was 21. So, what’s the big deal?
I’ll admit I’ve gone through
three cycles now of indifference, loathing, and now kind of liking
Manziel.
I remember watching him almost
single handedly beat Alabama in Tuscaloosa his freshman year and thinking, “that
kid is pretty good.” I was surprised a
freshman won the Heisman trophy, but figured it was bound to happen
eventually.
The loathing part set in the
summer following the Heisman when Manziel went insane frat boy and was in the
news constantly. And, yes, I realize he
was doing what a lot of college kids do, but I don’t like them either.
Now that he’s landed in the pros
in purgatory, otherwise known as Cleveland, I figure he’s adult earning money
to play a kid’s game and he can do what he wants to do.
To my knowledge, he hasn’t tested
positive for any banned substances, or claimed he was taking them to increase
his fertility, like Robert Mathis. He hasn’t
been caught on hotel surveillance cameras after knocking out his wife, like Ray
Rice. And, hopefully, he hasn’t murdered
anyone that we’ll learn about in a few years, like Aaron Hernandez.
I think it would be great if
Manziel turns out to be somewhere in the middle of the extremes that make
professional sports and especially the NFL so tedious. On the side of the ledger are the squeaky
clean, too good to be true, dare I say politically correct, players like Peyton
Manning and Tom Brady who never deviate from the script. On the other side of the ledger are the
Mathises and Rices and Hernandezes that make one feel a little uneasy for
enjoying the sport if players like this play it, on drugs, or by extending
violence beyond the field, or even murder.
Why couldn’t Manziel be like Joe
Namath or Ken Stabler, two other SEC QB gods from the past? As a leader of the Oakland Raiders in the
70’s, Stabler and others often stayed out late the night before games. As long as it didn’t affect their play, Coach
John Madden was fine with it. And, Joe Namath
was quoted once as saying, "It seems almost un-American to me for a
bachelor not to go around having a drink with a lady now and then." Well, wasn’t that all Manziel was doing in
Vegas? Namath and Stabler just didn’t
have to worry about Twitter, that’s all.