The Obsession With Johnny Manziel's Life

After Memorial Day Weekend in Las Vegas, people went to DEFCON 1 with hot takes about Johnny Manziel. He didn't really stop there and kept the party going while continuing to build his reputation as one of the biggest social media stars in the last couple years. Everyone wants to take a picture with Manziel, and this weekend, we finally hit the height of its ridiculousness with another picture going viral from Las Vegas. Johnny doesn't need to stop the party, but he needs to figure out a way to avoid the social media drama which seems to be impossible.

H/T BlackSportsOnline 

The aforementioned picture featured Manziel with a rolled-up 20 dollar bill in the bathroom of a Vegas nightclub. Usually when one rolls up money like that, it is to snort something whether it be cocaine, speed or adderall. The media immediately rushed to the conclusion Manziel was doing coke in the bathroom without any evidence of it. This is the peril of being a party animal in a social media atmosphere. People will always make assumptions when they are not there. It is like ESPN and many other blogs were Lily Aldrin asking 'Where's the poop, Johnny Football' without there being the actual poop (Just made a How I Met Your Mother reference in a story about cocaine, hello rock bottom). 

If we saw a picture, GIF, Vine of Manziel doing cocaine in that bathroom, this blog post is entirely different. This isn't about Manziel being left alone more so just us as blogger and media people being more smarter about what we publish about Johnny. If there is hard evidence that drugs of any sort were going on with him in that bathroom, or he went Wolf of Wall Street on the best looking strippers in Las Vegas, okay, that's a story worth discussing more than 'MANZIEL IS DA COOLEST.' This isn't even about my unbridled love for the Cleveland Browns quarterback, it is about being smarter. Let's not rush to conclusions without the evidence there. 

Let me provide my own theory on why Manziel rolled up a 20 dollar bill. He wanted to put it in his ear therefore it would be easier to pay for whatever he wanted with said 20 dollars. Likely, Manziel is wearing designer jeans with tight pockets in a crowded nightclub. It would be much easier for Manziel to grab from his ear to pay for whatever he might need with the 20 dollars then trying to find the money in his pocket. Or what if that was his clever way to tip a girl through her cleavage, you never really know with Manziel.  He is not somebody where everything is black and white. Honestly, he could have been doing cocaine too, something very common in Vegas. But am I one to call him out for doing it without any evidence?  Hell no, that's reckless.  

This is the last holiday weekend for Manziel before Training Camp. He will be there for a month with a couple off days thrown in. Manziel will be under a massive, Tim Tebow-like microscope, but at the same time, if he minds his business and wins games, that's all Cleveland will care about.

Charlie. 

Johnny Vegas: The Biggest Social Media Superstar

How was your Memorial Day Weekend?  Mine personally delivered in a major way with two days of heavy drinking, chasing women and spending way too much money. I think the terrible Wisconsin winter made this Memorial Day weekend extra special. That's also a code for trying to justify how much money I spent over a span of two days. But no one seemed to have a better Memorial Day than Cleveland Browns quarterback Johnny Manziel.

He took in Las Vegas like many young people in the United States do over Memorial Day Weekend as they bring the best DJ's and have these pool parties that you only see on Project X or movies like that.  When pictures began to circulate of Manziel hanging around the pools, ESPN ran right with the story talking about it as if it were breaking news that a 22 year old likes to go to Vegas and party his ass off.  This might be the time where we all have an intervention for the mothership and many other media outlets.

It is okay for Johnny Football to have fun. None of these pictures showed him doing a shot off a woman's breasts or him mooning the crowd. They look like normal pictures of a guy having a good time. It is bizarre we need to have this discussion about Manziel, but here we are in 2014 with the media having nothing better to do right now. It is also pretty clear he is the first social media superstar. Rob Gronkowski, a player he was pictured with it, had some of that as he had pictures of him with pornstar Bibi Jones, partying recklessly all over the country among other things. But Gronk doesn't play quarterback. Being the quarterback adds a whole new wrinkle to this thing.

This is going to become real tiresome. I am willing to bet most media outlets have one guy or girl assigned to Johnny Football Watch where they look at everything he is doing on a daily basis to see if they can find something to talk about. I mean Christ, the guy wore sandals for the team rookie photo and that somehow became a story. It seems like every day or so we get a new Manziel story. Cleveland made comments about trying to level him out a bit which is fine, but at the same time, it is Johnny's world and we are just living it. I don't know if there will be a step back from the Manziel coverage because everybody pushed their chips all in and now they are stuck with continuing the narrative. Not to mention, the dead period of sports in July after hockey and basketball ends will open up the flood gates for Manziel stories.

I don't always ask for pictures, but when I do, it's so I can do this. pic.twitter.com/kWZxv9G77V
— Elika Sadeghi (@steakNstiffarms) May 25, 2014

Tim Tebow had some of this stuff, but with him being a good nature Christian boy, the media never had discussion about his 'partying' habits. This will give us the first real look at 'What would it been like if we had Twitter/Instagram/Tinder when Joe Namath, Brett Favre or Michael Jordan played?'  Manziel will be the first test study of that hypothetical question. To that point, I could see Jameis Winston having some similar problems as college football media needs a Manziel replacement and who better than Winston? The social media superstar will only continue to get bigger and bigger as people get smarter on how to find the smallest details about a person.

It is too bad Johnny had to post a picture of him studying today because it shouldn't be needed. There are NFL players out there right now doing far worse things than having some beers in Las Vegas. Hopefully, Manziel keeps being his own person because it would be a shame to see him caged in.

Charlie.