The biggest scandal in 2013 involved Johnny Manziel of Texas A&M where Darren Rovell of ESPN reported the 2012 Heisman Trophy winner was paid to autograph hundreds of items.
Manziel never admitted to it….until now.
Manziel recently opened up about his past on YNK Podcast and revealed that he indeed got paid, but had good reason to do so. As expected, Rovell posted the clip of the former QB saying so and promising to go into more detail later.
The 27-year-old also revealed his feelings of regret, shame and embarrassment of his careeer in Cleveland.
“Looking back on it now, I would say I absolutely, 100% lost their respect …,” Manziel said referring to his former Browns teammates. “I would say we wasted a draft pick to go get this guy who doesn’t give a f—. And that’s my only thing in life that I haven’t been able to look back and like fully have closure on … it’s probably one of the only things that I haven’t looked back on and been able to be like super, super okay with what happened.”
“I don’t appreciate going to Cleveland for two years and impacting and wasting two years of Joe Thomas’ career, who’s a guy that’s going to be a 12-time Pro Bowler and going to be in the Hall of Fame.
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“I regret not going and being closer with these guys and being distant into the other life that I was living. And it’s nuts. And to sit back and look at it now, it’s a shameful thing and something that I have to look back, and at the end of the day, I can only say ‘Yo’ to those guys.”
Manziel made a comeback by playing in the Canadian Football League in 2018, but would be barred from ever playing for an unknown reason. He also appeared as a member of the Memphis Express in 2019 in the now-defunct Alliance of American Football.
He never took his talents to the XFL, because he thought the same fate would happen to them. It turns out he was right, but more so because of a global pandemic.
