Return of Manziel mania

Published 7:00 pm Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Johnny “Football” Manziel is becoming the Tiger Woods of football.

Not the accomplishments, certainly. He’s about 14 majors short of Woods’ neighborhood, although that Heisman Trophy on the mantle is a nice conversation piece.

No. That’s not it.

But, like Woods, no matter how far out of the public eye he ever gets, no matter how sure you are that you’ve heard the last of him, still, if there’s one sliver of a chance, one iota of a ray of hope that Johnny Football might somehow get back on that biggest stage and be relevant again, American life comes to a screeching halt as we overanalyze the possibilities and try to decide whether to take it seriously.

“Entertainment Tonight” is as likely to break in with updates as is ESPN.

The latest came Monday when Manziel was back in the news.

Manziel hasn’t played a meaningful game since 2013 at Texas A&M — quibble, if you must, but I don’t count anything done with the Cleveland Browns.

But there he was Monday on “Good Morning America,” once again tugging at our curiosity and threatening another comeback, maybe even to salvage a career that looked to be over however many times. 

He apparently has a note from his doctor now certifying that he was diagnosed about a year ago with a bipolar disorder.

“At the end of the day I can’t help that my wires are a little bit differently crossed than yours,” he said on the show. “I can’t help my mental makeup of the way that I was created. But I know if I stay on these meds and I continue to do what I am doing right now … (there) will be a drastic change.”

So those of rumors Chronic Immaturity complicated by Stage 3 Entitlement were just an early misdiagnosis.

But whatever.

Manziel, to his credit, didn’t blame his missteps on the disorder, although he said the heavy drinking was a way of “self-medicating” his battle with depression. He’s been off the hooch for a good while, he said.

Now he wants to put the football back in Johnny Football’s hands, even if he has to go to Canada to get it jump-started.

He does seem to have worn out his welcome with the NFL.

Admit it, you’ll play attention to any and all developments.

The Canadian Football League could be about to stumble onto a ratings bonanza.

There is still, after all these years, an odd obsession with Manziel. The only thing close was Tim Tebow, who just might be Manziel’s alter ego.

If Manziel was always a veritable Katzenjammer Kid in stumbling upon trouble at every turn, Tebow has always been under suspicion of being too pure and blindly innocent to be believable in real life.

He also couldn’t throw, but that’s irrelevant for this discussion. He keeps a stranglehold on public fascination, even with his current baseball pursuits.

Manziel, on the other hand, is the most intriguing football player in recent memory, all of it complicated by his ne’er-do-well antics.

He doesn’t look like a quarterback — he doesn’t look like any kind of football player.

But he had — who knows? Maybe still has — the most incredible natural football instincts you ever saw.

Surely the scouting reports read: Eyes in the back of his head.

He looks like somebody who came down out of the cheap seats to save the day and probably get the girl. He’s like a Disney sports movie, a little runt running ragtail around the real athletes until they’re so frustrated they give up.

I only saw him play two games in person, the two he played against LSU, both losses for his Aggies. They were probably the two worst games of his college career — five turnovers in one, couldn’t hit the ocean with a pass in the other.

And yet you couldn’t take your eyes off him.

Even while struggling he was that fascinating to watch, that different from the normal fare.

No matter how many times LSU sacked him or forced a quick throw, you couldn’t wait for the next play just to see what crazy chicanery he might be up to.

Yeah, sure, so far it hasn’t translated into NFL success, and probably never will.

But good luck to him.

There are a lot of things that would improve the NFL these days, but a productive, law-abiding Johnny Manziel would be a good start.

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