Johnny Manziel is one of the most famous college and professional football quarterbacks in the history of the game. Unfortunately, it’s not for all the right reasons. His current partying ways have all but prohibited from every trying to be in the NFL again. Once one of the most promising football players in college history, the most sought-after quarterback in the game, the man they called Johnny Football is now someone who is a free agent, reportedly went missing, and has been doing more partying than anything else in his life.
The former Texas A&M football star is seeing his star fall rather than rise to its full potential, and the world wants to know why this insanely talented young athlete is seemingly giving it all up for a life that will leave him broke and without a career sooner rather than later now that he’s headed down the wrong path.
With that said, here are 20 things you might not have known about Johnny Football.
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He’s had a camera on him called the Johnny Football camera
When he was playing his last season for Texas A&M and was ready to take on Alabama, one of the most powerful teams in the country, CBS actually had a camera that was the Johnny Football camera. It was trained only on him throughout the entire game, and it was not taken off of his face, his plays, and his moves the entire time. He is the only football player in history to have something like that happen to him.
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Net Worth
Johnny Manziel’s net worth is around $6 million. He was a Cleveland Brown, but the team let him go and now he is a free agent. However, he never has to worry about his finances if his parents have anything to say about it. They are worth a reported $50 million despite the fact that they were both bartenders when they met and were able to strike it big in business and create a successful lifestyle that enabled their son to go to the best schools and live a luxurious lifestyle.
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He plays all sports
During his high school career, Johnny Manziel played a number of sports. He was not just a football player. He loved to golf and to play basketball and baseball. However, he did want to go on to play sports professionally at some point in his career, so he opted to focus mostly on his skills on the baseball and football fields. It’s something that he was good at, though he really does excel at football more so than any other sport he plays.
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He’s got a criminal record
Johnny Manziel has been a troublemaker from the start. Before he was even chosen to become the first string quarterback in college, he was arrested for three different things. He was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, with failure to identify and with possession of a driver’s license that was not his own. He was in a fight late one night in College Station, and it did not end well for him or the people he was with at the time. Now you can add domestic abuse to his list of charges.
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He’s got a spotty reputation
When he was in college, he was widely received as being someone with some personality issues that did not go well with others. He was in trouble at one point because he dissed the city in which he played ball all over a parking ticket. He was also accused of dissing his former schools and his teachers, classmates and other people with whom he worked and played. He does not have a reputation for being someone who is particularly kind or well-behaved in any concept.
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His parents worry about him
It seems that Johnny Manziel’s parents worry about their son and his fame. The once told ESPN that they don’t believe he handles his fame very well, and that it’s gone to his head in a way that it should not have done. He is someone who has been in trouble in numerous occasions for his behavior, his attitude and his personality, and it seems that he is not working very hard to change those issues and make life easier for himself. They worry, and they’re working on helping him through his issues.
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He’s an addict
During the offseason in 2015, Johnny Manziel tried to keep things very quiet that he was addicted to alcohol. He checked himself into a rehab facility. He was struggling with alcohol addiction, and he was looking to find a way to keep his game strong by getting the help that he so desperately needed when he needed it. It was not an easy task for him to accomplish, but he was able to get a bit of help and see himself through his issues. Unfortunately all of those issues are back and seem to be even stronger than ever.
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He’s still addicted
Though he did spend some time in rehab to work through his alcohol issues, he did not actually overcome them. He was pulled over later in the year after he was in the car fighting with his girlfriend, and he admitted that he’d been drinking before he was pulled over. It was not his finest moment, and it’s one in which he wishes he had kept his mouth shut and his anger down. In reality, he should have kept his drinking to nothing and stayed out of trouble in the first place.
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He was demoted by the Browns
After only a short career with the Browns, Johnny Manziel already found a way to make sure that they were done with him. He was announced as their first-string quarterback, and then he was denounced the following day after the team found photos of him partying and behaving poorly on the internet the same night. The team immediately demoted him to third string, and he was furious with their decision even though he broke the rules that go along with his team requirements.
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He skipped an appointment
The final straw for the Cleveland Browns was when Johnny Manziel was spotted partying at a nightclub in Las Vegas the evening before his final game of the season in 2015. He suffered a concussion the following day during his game and failed to show up for the require medic appointment the following morning as all players with a concussion are required to do. He was not really interested in attending, so he did not. The team at that point was finished with Manziel and let him go.
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He’s close to his sister
Johnny Manziel has a younger sister by the name of Meri, and she loves her brother. When he was playing college ball, she went viral for a few hours after she tweeted that one of the fans from the rival team in the stadium was saying mean things about her brother and that he was “messing with the wrong sister” if he said one more word about her brother that was less than flattering. These two are close, and they always have been throughout their lives.
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He wanted to be a realtor
Even though he always wanted to play professional sports, Johnny Manziel did not actually think he would. When he was growing up, he wanted to be more like his parents and get into the oil business. That didn’t seem to work out for him too long, though, because he later changed his mind and decided that he’d like to become a real estate agent or developer or something to that esteem. He might still do it when he grows up a bit and gets over his partying ways, and we certainly believe his family hopes this is the case.
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Tom Brady reached out to him
There was a time when Tom Brady, one of the most famous football quarterbacks in the game, had nothing really flattering to say about Johnny Manziel. He was not impressed by him the way so many others were, but he did reach out to him at one point. He’s not considered very athletic to many, and he’s always struggled with that even with his historic career. He reached out to Manziel hoping he would assist him with this speed training to make him a better player in the long run.
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The Longhorns didn’t want him
The Texas Longhorns have a very famous football program, but they were not impressed enough to want to get Manziel on their team. While other schools from around the nation worked their recruiters to death trying to ink a deal with this one, the Longhorns simply showed no interest in getting him to work with them. It was a bit of a surprise to many, but it worked out in his favor. Texas probably feels differently in hindsight, but that is often how that works for those who want to make good decisions.
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He’s got famous fans
It’s nice to know that as a college football player there are some famous people out looking out for you. He has fans in people such as Lebron James and other famous faces. When he went to Cleveland, he found that he became even more appealing to James. Unfortunately, Johnny Manziel wasn’t able to keep his job with the Browns and his behavior is not exactly the type of behavior that someone like Lebron James is used to associating himself with. It didn’t work out for him.
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He wanted to play baseball more
We already discussed that Johnny Manziel had a greater love of all sports than just one, but he actually really wanted to play baseball more than anything. His dream growing up was to play for the MLB, not for the NFL. Unfortunately, he changed his mind once he got to college to try out and ended up going for the football team instead. It was a good choice for him given his career with the football team, but perhaps he might have been a better fit as a baseball player in the real world.
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He’s got very big feet
While it’s not usually football players you hear of having big feet, he does. Most of the time it’s basketball stars with their sheer height and size that mean they have huge feet, but Johnny Manziel is not joking around with the size of his. He has a size 15 foot, which is considered massive to many, and he has to special order his shoes from all over the place. He’s not someone who can really be out shopping and find a pair of shoes that he loves and really wants to bring home with him. It’s not that simple.
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Johnny Football is a high school nickname
If you’ve ever wondered why Johnny Manziel is so often called Johnny Football, you might want to ask the people he attended high school with. They are the ones who gave him that name and made it famous, and it was not something that he learned when he was in college like so many people assume. He was given the name during his high school career because he was so good at the sport and so many people wanted to see him play and were impressed with his game.
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Schools did not highly recruit him
Unlike some of the other high school players in the country that show great aptitude on the field and are recruited for months, Johnny Manziel did not have much in that way. He was good, but schools did not actually want him as a player. He was ranked as a three star player, which means that he was not at the top of his class of players, and many schools simply were not all that interested in wanting to get to know him or get to play for him. It’s probably safe to say that they are all regretting that move by now.
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His father refused to get him a car
When Johnny Manziel was in high school, he had a problem with alcohol. His dad was so worried about him that he refused to get him a car, but told him that he would get his son a car if he was able to stay away from alcohol throughout his high school career. Manziel was not able to hold up his end of the deal, and was actually in trouble with the law for underage drinking more than once. His dad did not bail him out, though, he actually asked the judge to make his son’s punishment more severe to teach him.
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