“Give me some strokes for my new maturity, folks!”
– Johnny Manziel
The NFL season ends with the Super Bowl on February 2, 2014. Then, from February 3, 2014 onward, all live sports talk radio shows are not about the NBA or the upcoming MLB season. The only question that now keeps coming up is: “Will the Houston Texans take Johnny Manziel with their first pick in the 2014 season draft on May 8, 2014?
“Strokes? I’ll give you some strokes!”
– Vladimir Putin
Our Pecan Park Eagle questions are these:
1) Is Johnny Manziel, or the first pick in the NFL draft, more important to fans than either basketball or baseball?
2) Does the apparently no-longer-so-wide world of sports really need a little over three months to think and talk only of what is going to happen to Johnny Manziel?
3) What happened to seasonal interest in the Rockets and Texans? Was their incredibly blundered TV plan so fatal to fan interest that its killed fan interest among those who can still no longer see their games on TV?
4) In the Astros’ case, have they simply so buried themselves so deep in losing that fans no longer believe in their comeback plan?
5) Will this subject-fixation on Manziel be the death of talk radio? – Or will a steady diet of the same food source have the same impact on radio talk shows that it does upon cockroaches? – Will it simply cause them to multiply and crawl all over the wide world of electronic broadcast and contact media?
6) Has the end of the world already arrived – and simply slipped by my normally agile and alert mind? – Or is the Manziel radio fixation simply a form of purgatory that the sports gods have vented upon us in a fit of boredom and wrath over the incredible ability of the many who buy into it as the only important subject in the world?
7) What about Vladimir Putin? – Is anybody going to draft him as the best wide deceiver in the world?
8) What do you think is wrong with this picture?
The Pecan Park Eagle 
March 5, 2014 at 4:40 pm |
the world is on fire in a dozen places – and we are stripping down our military – “packing” the NLRB – spending more than we earn –
Manzel should not even be a “blip” on the radar screen
March 5, 2014 at 4:47 pm |
Teams generally talk the most about the guys they *don’t* end up drafting. That’s why I’m still guessing Bridgewater or Clowney at #1.
Not many people care about baseball early in spring training or the NBA until the playoffs so both a big *meh* for me right now.
Many Aggies do not yet own or operate a television which is why they are all over sports radio.
Putin would be a big step up for us from our current leader. Why have a pretend Communist when you can have the real thing?
March 5, 2014 at 4:52 pm |
It would be interesting to conduct a poll to find out how many listeners/callers of sports talk radio have any idea who Vladimir Putin is – I suspect many might think that, with that name, he must be a hockey player.
As for Johnny Manziel, I don’t understand the mania over this man either. For one thing, I think he is going to be the second coming of Vince Young: a quarterback who accomplished some great things at a university in the state of Texas, but who is not going to make it in the pros. Vince Young is bigger, stronger, and more athletic than Manziel, but apparently didn’t have the drive to be great in the pros and – like Manziel – is a bit of a knucklehead. I think Manziel has the drive – he has family money, which Young never had, so it’s not all about the money – but I don’t think his playing style is going to work in the NFL. He had to come out of at least two games this past season because of injury already. If he continues his running style in the NFL, he might last only a total of two games. He’s too small to be a good pocket passer, and I’m not sure he has enough accuracy to be one either. All in all, I see NFL bust written all over Johnny Manziel.
As for local interest in the Rockets and Astros, I’m afraid Houston – like the state of Texas in general – is all about football. The Rockets and Astros are only of interest to most Houstonians when they are competing for the playoffs and championships; then Houstonians hop on the bandwagon in droves. I’m sure the Comcast situation hasn’t helped (obviously), but I doubt interest in either team would be significantly greater even if all of the Houston area could see both teams’ games.
That’s my two-cents’ worth for the day. There is no glasnost in Houston or Russia any longer. : )
March 5, 2014 at 7:17 pm |
The media–print, radio and TV, have a large financial investment in the NFL so I think they think they need to protect it. What else can explain a radio station’s decision to talk Texans football 24 hours a day, every week of the year. These fads usually fade; it will be difficult to maintain prolonged interest in collegiate underclassmen who really don’t go to school.
March 12, 2014 at 5:34 am |
This is why I really can’t stand listening to 610 AM. These guys won’t talk about other sports in the offseason. If you’re not here to talk about the Astros and Rockets when appropriate, I don’t care about you. There are more sports out there than football, and for god’s sake baseball is houston’s original love.
March 5, 2014 at 9:18 pm |
Rick B. nailed it pretty well from point of view – just hate that potentially a 1/3 or more of Texan fans will be disappointed to the point of not caring if this one isn’t selected. I remember the Reggie Bush / Mario Williams debacle but this one is even bigger because it is an Aggie and a QB too boot. I would trade out and get multiple picks.
March 12, 2014 at 5:31 am |
I love how everyone said that Keenum was too small to play, and then the same people turn around and say that Manziel is just fine with his size. If we wanted a QB like Manziel, we already have one. His name is Case Keenum, and he’s bigger than that aggie. Give him an actual O-Line and some more time, and he would improve significantly. Unfortunately, he attended Houston U., and not UT-Austin, so nobody gives him a real chance.
I find the lack of Rockets interest to be a bit odd right now considering we have the best team since the 90s championship days, but maybe it will take a season to wake people back up to the boys in red.
As far as baseball goes, there is so much misinformation to the casual fan, that they think Houston might as well give their franchise to another city at this point. Most people don’t understand what’s happening to the team, they just know that they have been terrible, so they aren’t looking forward to watching them. If they start winning, most of this will change.