Around late November last year, the chase for the Heisman Trophy had finally been whittled down to a trio of candidates. In one corner was Manti Te'o, the star linebacker on one of the nation's most prestigious and clean-cut teams, who had played through the deaths of his grandmother and girlfriend. Option two was Collin Klein, the midwestern gentleman leading the nation's feel-good story, who hadn't kissed his wife before marriage. And the third was Johnny Manziel, the brash freshman quarterback who publicly partied and drank alcohol, who had been arrested in the offseason, and who boasted by far the best statistical profile of the trio.
The amount of protest when Manziel took home the 2012 Heisman was ludicrous. Critics eviscerated the then-19-year-old for his immaturity (read that again: criticized a 19-year-old for being immature), claiming he was unworthy of winning college football's biggest prize.
All that criticism of Manziel's character insinuates that there's something more to winning the Heisman Trophy than being really good at football.
Furthermore, there's a societal pressure for college athletes to act like adults just because they're thrust on to a national stage. Why should we hold them to such a standard? Why should we force athletes like Te'o, whose girlfriend was later revealed to never exist, to conform to some unwritten, golden boy standard just for being talented?
Manziel certainly holds himself to no such standard. He managed to one-up his 2012 season this summer, getting kicked out of the Manning Passing Academy for probably being hungover and getting suspended for the first half of his 2013 opener for accepting money for autographs. When he came into the game in the third quarter and immediately scored a touchdown, he mimed signing his name to the defense. This came after an offseason full of responses to Twitter critics in which he attached pictures of his Heisman and courtside seats at NBA games. The college football world was quick to call out an NCAA violation; Manziel simply responded that his parents were rich.
How can we weigh the sophomore quarterback's amateurish antics with his All-American play on the field? Why do we have to? At the core of it all, college football is an entertainment business, and Manziel is a fabulous entertainer.
He'll be putting on his biggest show yet this Saturday at 3:30 p.m. in College Station, Texas, when his Texas A&M University Aggies take on the University of Alabama Crimson Tide. It's the highest-profile game of the young season, a rematch of last year's thriller in Tuscaloosa and one of college's football's biggest good-versus-evil battles in recent memory. It's Nick Saban's classic Power I and defensive football, his clean-cut Tide against the A&M new-age spread offense, led by the infamous Johnny Manziel.
Quite frankly, if you associate Saban's bunch with the good side, then I truly believe you're watching football for the wrong reasons.
College football is rapidly shifting. Major conferences are picking their smaller counterparts to death by constantly raiding their teams. The BCS is finally giving way to a four-team playoff. Big-name schools all over the map are paying players, and offering sex and cars to recruits, and the governing body of the NCAA is near-completely powerless to do anything about it.
Sports Illustrated, timely as always, is in the process of releasing a five-part investigation of the Oklahoma State University football program on its website. The investigation was beautifully written and researched, with the information cleanly split into five categories and released over a five-day span.
It's been met with a resounding "who cares" from the college football world, who are tired of seeing stories like these fall under the "breaking news" category. We're well aware that this is a sordid, greasy sport with a closet full of skeletons, dirty secrets and hundred dollar bills. But we love it anyway because it's the best damn sport on the planet.
Why should it upset me, then – hell, why should it upset anyone? – that the best football player in the nation is as greasy and unpredictable as the sport we love?
Saban was asked last offseason about this changing landscape, with the traditional Power I Formations he knows and loves rapidly being tossed aside in favor of five-wide spreads. He looked at the audience with his trademark scowl and said, "Is this what we want college football to be?"
Yes, Nick. We do. Manziel and A&M will probably lose to Bama on Saturday, but anyone with a fleeting interest in the sport should realize what another Aggies win would mean. It would be the triumph of everything college football celebrates – unpredictability, the underdog, anything but the status quo and the three-time title-winning Tide.
As far as Johnny goes, college football fans must realize that superstars and role models can often be mutually exclusive. America's ultra-determined obsession with forcing every athlete – even amateur ones – to fit a predetermined box is unsettling and quite frankly dangerous. Hastily appointing role models leads to blind idolization, which leads to stories like Manti Te'o, or Oscar Pistorius, the Olympian with prosthetic legs who went from worldwide hero to monster when he was charged with the murder of his girlfriend.
Manziel is no role model, but he shouldn't fall victim to our innate desire to appoint them. We should appreciate Johnny Football for what he is – an exciting, flawed young man who is a perfect representative of an exciting, flawed game. His show won't keep rolling forever. Some day he'll be forced to either mature or flame out.
I see no reason for that day to be Saturday. Gig 'em, Ags.
– By Ryan Smith
