Johnny Manziel’s rise and fall from stardom continues to add new wrinkles.
The former Texas A&M star appeared on Shannon Sharpe’s Club Shay Shay for an interview Wednesday. In addition to issuing apologies to Drake and LeBron James for past behaviors, Manziel revealed some previously unknown facts about his college football career and the fallout from his NFL collapse.
Manziel revealed that before he officially declared for the NFL, his father had reportedly tried to negotiate an under-the-table deal for his son to return to Texas A&M without Manziel’s knowledge.
“It’s the spring of 2014, December 2013,” Manziel said during the interview. “I’m getting ready to make this decision on if I’m going to the NFL draft or if I’m going to stay. My dad went and had a meeting with Kevin Sumlin. And pretty much went to him man to man and was like, ‘We’ll take $3 million and we’ll stay for the next two years.’
“And my dad did this without me knowing. And I ain’t mad at him about it for nothing.”
Manziel went on to detail that schools during that time had a “bagman” who would hand out cash to players and recruits in exchange for commitments.
“It’s the way the business worked back then,” Manziel said. “There was a bag man. There was a bagman at LSU. There was a bagman at ‘Bama. There was a bagman at every school around the country if you were competing for a national title. It is what it was, and it was always that way until we’re into the NIL portion of everything now, the way it should be.”
The former Browns quarterback also detailed the ramifications of a deep cocaine addiction that developed once he was dismissed from the Browns. Manziel reportedly lost 40 points because of the effects.
“I was 2010 points when I left Cleveland,” Manziel said, later following up with “I was 170 pounds sitting in Vegas.” When Sharpe inquired about the rapid weight loss, Manziel replied, “How do you lose 40 pounds? You’re on a strict diet of blow.”
Manziel has been sober since 2016. The first-round quarterback continues to be extremely open about his downfall from college football stardom. Manziel released a Netflix documentary Johnny Football in August 2023 that documented the rise and fall of the two-time Heisman winner.
