Johnny Manziel is arguably one of the most polarizing college athletes of his time. In his first season playing quarterback for Texas A&M in 2012, he earned a major win against Alabama, the conference’s top team. The upset made Manziel a star, and he earned the nickname “Johnny Football.”
On Aug. 8, his story will be told as part of the UNTOLD anthology series. In Johnny Football, Manziel’s growing college stardom –– and the money and problems that followed –– sets the stage for what happened when the controversial player went pro as a first round pick for the Cleveland Browns.
“I don’t think at that time in my life I really knew what to expect or what was necessarily coming in the future ahead of me,” Manziel told Tudum.
After winning the prestigious Heisman Trophy as a college freshman, everything changed for Manziel. Donations to Texas A&M poured in, and the university made plans for a $420 million renovation of the Aggies’ stadium. But while Manziel’s name and image were profitable for the university — in Johnny Football, it’s stated that his Heisman was estimated to have brought in $37 million in media exposure for Texas A&M — the NCAA’s rules at the time maintained that college athletes could not make money off their name, image, or likeness.
“I was tired of not having any money,” Manziel says in Johnny Football. “And I sure as hell saw 45 million #2 Adidas jerseys sold and it didn’t make any sense. And I had a bone to pick.”
According to the doc, Manziel and his former best friend, Nathan “Uncle Nate” Fitch, came up with a plan. During a trip to Miami for the 2013 BCS National Championship Game, Manziel says he made $33,000 from two different men by signing thousands of autographs. “Once that happened for the first time, it was like game on,” he says. Manziel and Fitch returned every few months to earn more money. They began taking bigger trips, and were sitting courtside at professional basketball games, partying with celebrities, and had front row seats at the Super Bowl. That’s also when the NCAA became suspicious and began investigating Manziel for signing sports memorabilia for money. Around the same time, a story about the Manziel family’s oil fortune took on a life of its own in national sports media.
“I wasn’t giving people anything,” Manziel, who was not allowed to speak to the media as a college freshman, told Tudum, “so everybody started to [speculate] about what I was doing, and where I was going and spending money.” When rumors about his family wealth started cropping up, Uncle Nate and Manziel saw it as an opportunity to build a myth around his fame (“I think everything that we were doing back then was probably [as] a dynamic duo.”).
Manziel was ultimately suspended for half a game, but his professional football career was short-lived. After a period of time in rehab and a bender in Vegas that caused him to miss a game, Manziel was released from the Browns in the Spring of 2016 when he couldn’t get his partying under control. “I felt the biggest weight lifted off my shoulders ever,” he says in UNTOLD.
Manziel isn’t playing much football these days. “I’m playing a lot more golf than football,” he told Tudum with a laugh. “I’m pretty much just enjoying life at this point in my life.” Though the former quarterback has stepped away from the spotlight, he believes his story played a part in changing the NCAA rules regarding how college athletes can make money. The organization agreed in 2021 to allow students to make money from endorsement deals, their social media accounts, sell autographs, and otherwise profit from their name, image, and likeness. “I think things have finally worked themselves out to a place where people who are program-changing, who are legends in college athletics are able to get their worth,” he said, adding, “and it’s one of the final nails in the coffin of the NCAA, which is what I like to see as well.”
Johnny Football is directed by Ryan Duffy, making his return to the series following UNTOLD: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist from the series’ second volume. The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist tells the story of former Notre Dame linebacker, Manti Te’o, and the scandal that exploded after the media discovered his girlfriend — whom he claimed had died the same day as his grandmother — didn’t actually exist. Duffy’s approach to Manziel’s story is another intimate portrait of a football star struggling to process their choices after the fact.
“I hope viewers take away a nuanced and intimate understanding of Johnny and the running tension between his life as Johnny Football and Johnny Manziel,” Duffy said in a statement to Netflix. “This isn’t one of those sports docs on an older
player looking back on victory or defeat and reflecting accordingly in a tidy ending. Johnny is still midstream in a lot of this, and I hope this doc offers a compelling and honest look at his present tense processing.”
Watch UNTOLD: Johnny Football on Netflix now.
