COLLEGE STATION, Tex.– As we prepare for a bigger than life, early season SEC showdown between top-ranked Alabama and sixth-ranked Texas A & M here Saturday, the controversy surrounding Aggies’ Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Johnny Manziel’s alleged multiple off season autograph sessions continues to perculate.
ESPN stirred the pot yesterday when it obtained and-aired a photo of Manziel signing for South Florida autograph broker Drew Tieman in early January.
In the picture, which two sources have confirmed to ESPN as legitimate, Manziel, in a maroon shirt, is standing over a covered pool table signing photos of his image while Tieman oversees the process. The photo, according to sources, was taken in the Ft. Lauderdale apartment in which Tieman was living at the time.
ESPN attempted to reach Tieman through his company and was told he was not immediately available for comment. Texas A&M has not made Manziel available for interviews this week and no A & M official has returned calls from the cable giant.
Manziel, a redshirt sophomore who led A & M to a huge upset victory over the defending national champions last year in Tuscaloosa, is arguably the most exciting and marketable player in the country. He has become big business in college football. CBS has even decided to dedicate an single camera to focus on his every move during this spectacle, which prompted moral outrage from Aggies’ second-year coach Kevin Sumlin..
“I just don’t understand why there’s got to be one guy singled out and put a camera on all the time,” Sumlin said during a Tuesday news conference. “That’s not what we’re about, that’s not what we’re trying to promote and, certainly, from my standpoint all the criticism about individualism on the football team, I don’t think this helps enhance the team concept one bit.”
Manziel has become bigger news than the team he plays for in the wake of a wild headline hogging past two months, which has produced more than its share of negative press .
Last month, sources told ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” that Manziel signed more than 1,100 autographs for Tieman over a two-day period while in South Florida for the BCS title game. Sources say Tieman paid more than $10,000 to authenticate those autographs with James Spence Authentication. Sources told “Outside the Lines” that Manziel signed at least 4,400 autographs for Tieman, two brokers in Connecticut at the Walter Camp Awards and Kevin Freistat, an autograph broker who had at least one signing session with Manziel in Florida in January and another in Houston later in the month.
In late August, the NCAA, who interviewed Manziel; and Texas A&M, which conducted its own internal investigation; released a joint statement that said an NCAA investigation was unable to find evidence that Manziel received payments for signing the autographs, based on the player’s personal denials and lack of any paper trail. But the NCAA and the school agreed that student-athletes should know that when signing numerous autographs in one sitting, ther memoribilia are likely to be sold for commercial purposes.
Manziel was suspended by the NCAA for the first half of the team’s season opener against Rice because he violated an NCAA bylaw, which states that student-athletes cannot allow products with their names and likenesses to be sold even if they do not profit from it.
Manziel did not help his image when he taunted Rice players after throwing three touchdown passes in a little over 10 minutes in the second half of a 52-31 victory, flashing “Show me the Money” signs and making autograph gestures. He was finally getting hit with an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for his actions after his final TD pass of the day that got him pulled from the game in the fourth quarter.
But if he beats Alabama for a second half, he will be in the thick of the Heisman discussion again, with a chance to become only the second player other than Ohio State running back Archie Griffin to win two of those coveted awards.
