The Pecan Park Eagle

Johnny Manziel, QB
Texas A&M, 2012
Heisman Trophy Award

The Manziel Penalty came down from the NCAA on Wednesday, 8/28/13. …

Johnny Football cannot play for one-half of the home versus Rice game coming up this Saturday as the opening contest in 2013 for both teams. Manziel will undoubtedly sit out the first half versus the heavily outgunned Rice Owls and then pump the TV ratings for ABC/ESPN by starting the second half to a record-roaring full house crowd of Texas Aggie fans at Kyle Field.

That transaction thus nails the issue into the books as closed and resolved. The NCAA did their job by handing out a wrist-slap to the Aggie 2012 Heisman Trophy winner for … what? It wasn’t for Manzeil selling his autographs. That action was both denied and unproven. No, the NCAA penalized Manziel “for perhaps knowingly signing with autograph dealers”.

How’s that? …. “For perhaps knowingly signing with autograph dealers”?

If you sign with an autograph dealer as a star athlete, doesn’t that imply some notion to the possibility that the athlete expects to get paid for his signatures somewhere down the line? And would not that language be contained in what now exists as a contract (legal or not) between the athlete and the dealer?

Or do you actually have to have either a confession or a proof of a cash payment to hold up a signed contract as evidence of a wrongdoing on the part of Mr. Manziel? – Apparently that is the case. I don’t know what he signed his named to do for those autograph dealers, but apparently it doesn’t matter if he denies getting any money from them and the NCAA can’t find any bullets that had been fired from the smoking gun as cash payments.

Now the NCAA, Texas A&M, college football, the TV networks, and the sponsors get to have the 2013 football season they were hoping for before it was discovered this off-season that the Heisman is no award for wisdom, maturity, restraint, or common sense.

Since the NCAA proved today that they were only interested in getting this turkey baked prior to the start of the season, it would have made it more interesting for them to have given Johnny Manzeil at least one option to that cruel half-game penalty versus Rice.

How about this NCAA offer that never happened:

Mr. Johnny Manziel, for cavorting, or otherwise signing with known sports autograph dealers, even though you apparently never accepted or expected to get paid by them for your services, please select one of these two equally weighted options as your penalty for making this the kind of public issue that the NCAA cannot totally avoid:

(1) Sit out half the game that Texas A&M plays at home against Rice this coming Saturday, August 31, 2013; or else,

(2) Give up eating rice in any form, including Chinese takeout, until after the 2013-2014 college football and bowl season is concluded.

Either way, Johnny, work a little harder this season on the business of thinking through the fact that we all, and that includes Heisman Trophy winners, face consequences for every action we take. Do that much and you may even yet grow up to be a real cool version of “Johnny Football”.