Don't Call Johnny Manziel Un-American

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.