Former Cleveland Browns draft pick, Johnny Manziel, will officially return to professional football in what may be his last chance at a comeback.
The comeback is on, Johnny Manziel is back in pro football, this according to ESPN. Manziel, who was considering returning with the brand new Fan Controlled Football league. The league will begin play in February and will feature games of 7-on-7. Apparently, fans will set the rosters, call plays, and will have a blend of traditional and esports “environments”. The games will be about one-hour in length and are intended to be fast-paced.
So why does this matter to Cleveland fans? Well, it shows what Manziel could’ve been had he not been such a knucklehead. This league went for Manziel. There’s a reason why the CFL, AAF, and even the second-iteration of the XFL were all interested in him. He’s a draw. He gets eyes on the product.
If you’re an upstart league like the Fan Controlled Football brand is, Manziel’s a get. He’s going to help bring the casual football fan to the product, mostly because Manziel remains the greatest football enigma of the last decade. “What could’ve been?” is asked constantly about him. No one is entirely sure why, what is this captivation that he has on people, but he does. He has it. The ratings in the games he played for the CFL and AAF were high for a reason. Heck, the CFL rarely gets coverage in the United States, and because of his involvement with them, ESPN put on CFL games in primetime.
Manziel has the ability to redefine who he is this time around, something he’s well aware of, telling ESPN;
"I’m at a point in my life where I’m 28 years old and I’m still trying to figure out what I’m doing moving forward and trying to re-create an identity, and that’s what the past year has been about for me."
There’s going to be a lot of upset Cleveland fans who don’t like Manziel, who want him to disappear and go away forever. There was no reason for the Browns to draft him in 2014, but they did. Now he’s part of the Browns history no matter what happens next, which makes his involvement with this league part of the overall legacy of his career and his involvement with the Browns.
For that reason alone, people will watch. You’re going to have people tune in because he’s a huge celebrity sport’s star. People do that stuff all the time. Mike Tyson drew fans back because of his name. Bellator MMA’s most-watched show was a fight between Kimbo Slice and a-then-51-year-old Ken Shamrock. Neither man could win a fight against a top of the line fighter but people paid to see it. They tuned in.
They’ll tune in for Manziel’s debut as well.
You can root for him, or against him. You can decide to watch all of the games, just his or none at all. You can roll your eyes because you know when the Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson led-XFL relaunches in 2021, that Manziel’s name will pop back up. It’s inevitable. The star power he still has, six-seven years later, is a sign that people are still interested to some degree in him. This league’s success will be built, in part, on his ability to keep fans.
If he plays well, who knows? If he doesn’t, well, this might be it.
What if it’s not, though? What if he dazzles? Maybe he ends up in the XFL or a return to the Spring League that the NFL has. Maybe he ends up back in the NFL after all. It would be a heck of a story, that’s for sure and whether you like that or not, you can’t deny that everyone loves a good story.
This is probably why people still care about Manziel because deep down they know his pro-football story isn’t over just yet.