Johnny Manziel will join Fan Controlled Football startup league

Johnny Football is ready to get back into the game.

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Johnny Manziel said he plans to join the Fan Controlled Football league, a startup 7-on-7 organization where fans will set rosters and call plays in an interactive setting, ESPN reported. The new league, which currently has four teams, is scheduled to begin in February.

Manziel, 28, the 2012 Heisman Trophy winner out of Texas A&M and the first freshman to win college football’s most prestigious award, will play for a team called the Zappers, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“The more I heard about what this was going to be, the more I felt it was going to be something that was just very fun,” Manziel told ESPN. “It’s going to be very fan-oriented and something I could get behind without being extremely, extremely, extremely serious, the way that my football career has been in the past.”

Manziel was a sensation at Texas A&M in 2012-2013, passing for 7,820 yards and 73 touchdowns while rushing for 2,169 yards and scoring 30 TDs.

He was never able to parlay that success into the NFL. Drafted in the first round of the 2014 draft by the Cleveland Browns at No. 22 overall, Manziel threw seven touchdown passes and ran for another before he was cut. Off-the-field issues and inattention to his job were some of the reasons the Browns let him go, ESPN reported.

Manziel revealed in 2018 that he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and abused alcohol to fight depression, the sports network reported.

Manziel last played football in the Alliance of American Football in 2019, The Sporting News reported. After he was cut by the Browns, Manziel played in the Canadian Football League and in The Spring League, the magazine reported.

Sohrob Farudi, the CEO and co-founder of the Fan Controlled Football league, said the new league will allow Manziel to “be authentic.”

“It’s not only what you can do on the field, but who you are off the field,” Farudi told ESPN. “We want them to connect to fans and be authentic. I think if you look at Johnny’s career, he was electric on and off the field. He has that big, bold personality. Sure, he rubbed some people the wrong way. But he just has this presence about him.

“He got into these other leagues and, I hate to say this, but it’s like the handcuffs were put on. You had to act differently. You had to walk and talk differently. He couldn’t just be himself. That’s where we want to be different as a league. We’re really embracing this idea of being more than an athlete. ... We’re very comfortable with having players be big personalities off the field and doing what they want to do. For us, it’s as much as about the off-field opportunities to connect with the fan base as it is about the football on the field.”

Manziel originally had no plans to return to football, but said the new league intrigued him.

“Life gives you opportunities sometimes to do something that you would still like to do if it was in a different capacity,” Manziel told ESPN. “This has a lot of potential to just be a good time and still be football-centric.”

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