Johnny Football, drinking champagne from bottle, on inflatable swan in Austin Tex. club during X Games. (Youtube capture)
Whoever invented August didn't take into account that patients are no less stressed while their shrinks vacation at Lake Winnipesaukee; that low volume does funny things to the stock market, and that ESPN has 24 hours to fill every day.
Of course, ESPN can take care of itself. It's the audience that needs an alert as the network stretches stories like the NFL draft into four-month sagas, so that somewhere along the line, 25 players may be projected No. 1, even Texas A&M's Johnny Manziel, so annointed by Mel Kiper, even if the little ranconteur measured 5-11 3/4 and the NFL declared open season on full-sized scrambling QBs last season, ruling they were fair game when they ran.
Manziel wound up going No. 22 to Cleveland, which didn't have a name quarterback, or a proven one, just Brian Hoyer, but did acquire a second pick on the first round, enabling the Browns to take Johnny Football after selecting a cornerback at No. 8.
Manziel might not have gone that high without some Johnny Football flair after sitting through 21 picks with TV cameras up his nose as his fans went bananas-including an aggravated six-year-old whose parents posted a video of him on Youtube, promising to 'cut the TV in half' if teams kept passing on his hero.
Manziel texted Browns QB coach Dowell Loggains, reminding him he was still on the board. Loggains forwarded it to Coach Mike Pettine who showed it to owner Jimmy Haslam. Moments later, Johnny Football was a Brown, on his way to the podium, rubbing his fingers together in the man-who-broke-the-bank-at-Monte-Carlo sign as if he had gone No. 1, after all.
Browns GM Ray Farmer insisted that Haslam didn't override his football people ('I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that Jimmy Haslam at no point demanded, requested, tried to influence the process in any way,')... although it looked as if the owner did just that.
Farmer acknowledged that he wanted another quarterback, Louisville's Teddy Bridgewater. As Loggains remembered it before they hushed everyone up, 'We're sitting there and they keep showing Johnny on TV and Johnny and I are texting and he shoots me a text and he says, 'I wish you guys would come get me. Hurry up and draft me because I want to be there. I want to wreck this league together.'
'When I got that text, I forwarded it to the owner and to the head coach. I'm like, ''This guy wants to be here. He wants to be part of it.' As soon as that happened, Mr. Haslam said, 'Pull the trigger. We're trading up to go get this guy.''
We're in a new age with teen heroes, annointed, not by the media, which has some (small) expertise, but by social media, which means fans, especially young ones... even six-year-old diehards whose parents post videos on Youtube of their carrying on. Of course, things can get out of hand, as they may have with Jimmy Haslam, who may not know much more about Johnny Football than that six-year-old.
Manziel's rookie season and his career will, indeed, be instructive. If he is now only Hoyer's backup, Johnny Football's 'duel' with fellow Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III in Monday's game couldn't have been bigger on ESPN if Godzilla and King Kong duked it out in mid-town Manhattan.
'Well, I'll tell ya, let's start with the NFL because this is a big night,' said anchor Linda Cohn, leading off Monday's SportsCenter. 'And this won't be just any preseason game tonight on on ESPN Monday Night Football when the Cleveland Browns face the Washington Redskins. We're talking about Brian Hoyer who's actually the quarterback that's starting the game for the Browns and the team's probable starter in week one. But also, here's two former Heisman Trophy winners who shined from colleges in the Lone Star State, Robert Griffin III and Johnny Manziel, both taking the field... just not at the same time.'
'Britt McKinely joins us now,' continues Cohn. 'She's got a front row seat for this excitement. And Britt, what is the significance of the performance of these two quarterbacks and how that that will help determine for example if they start in week one?'
'Well, Linda, it's very important, considering this game could be the decision maker,' said McKinley, looking like a misplaced Hollywood starlet in the empty stadium.
With Pettine planning to announce his opening day starter this week, Hoyer is expected to get the nod-bad as he looked Monday, picking up one first down in four series. Manziel excelled only in comparison, throwing an eight-yard touchdown pass to halfback Dion Lewis but completing only seven of 16. Of course, with unknown third-stringer Connor Shaw bringing the Browns within one point, throwing a 45-yard touchdown pass on the last play, it might now be a three-way race.
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