BREAKING: Johnny Manziel Investigation

[IceCap]

Goth, check your inbox.

[Kramerica Industries]

The real important thing that came out of all of this is that now Goth and admiral are going to cause a hell of a lot of confusion.

Woo-hoo!

[Gothamite]

I rather like it.

[IceCap]

Oh G-d, duelling avatars. I've already been confused once...

[Still MIGHTY]

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Seriously? Why even bother?

JOHNNY MANZIEL SUSPENDED FOR HALF

Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Johnny Manziel of No. 7 Texas A&M has been suspended for the first half of Saturday's season opener against the Rice Owls, a source told ESPN's Brett McMurphy on Wednesday afternoon.

The agreement between the NCAA and Texas A&M closes the book on Manziel's recent issues, a source told McMurphy

LINK

[Lights Out]

What a joke of a punishment. It doesn't even make sense to only suspend someone for half a game. They might as well not suspend him at all.

The NCAA is clearly just protecting the Heisman winner and the SEC again. They have zero credibility at this point and should just shut down.

[vicfurth]

What a joke of a punishment. It doesn't even make sense to only suspend someone for half a game. They might as well not suspend him at all.

The NCAA is clearly just protecting the Heisman winner and the SEC again. They have zero credibility at this point and should just shut down.

They'd be a knight in shining armor to you if he was out for the year.

You didn't get your way. Get over it.

[Lights Out]

First of all, if he's not guilty, why would they suspend him after investigating him? Surely they'd have found nothing wrong, right?

Second of all, even if he didn't take money, he still violated NCAA rules just by signing the autographs:

Title:12.5.2.1 - Advertisements and Promotions After Becoming a Student-Athlete.

After becoming a student-athlete, an individual shall not be eligible for participation in intercollegiate athletics if the individual:

(a) Accepts any remuneration for or permits the use of his or her name or picture to advertise, recommend or promote directly the sale or use of a commercial product or service of any kind; or

(b) Receives remuneration for endorsing a commercial product or service through the individual's use of such product or service.

Title:12.5.2.2 - Use of a Student-Athlete's Name or Picture Without Knowledge or Permission.

If a student-athlete's name or picture appears on commercial items (e.g., T-shirts, sweatshirts, serving trays, playing cards, posters) or is used to promote a commercial product sold by an individual or agency without the student-athlete's knowledge or permission, the student-athlete (or the institution acting on behalf of the student-athlete) is required to take steps to stop such an activity in order to retain his or her eligibility for intercollegiate athletics. Such steps are not required in cases in which a student-athlete's photograph is sold by an individual or agency (e.g., private photographer, news agency) for private use. (Revised: 1/11/97, 5/12/05)

[Lights Out]

Since you've edited your post:

They'd be a knight in shining armor to you if he was out for the year.

Not really. The NCAA already proved themselves to be extremely inconsistent in the punishments it hands out long before anyone even knew who Johnny Football was. If they had managed not to screw this one up, chances are they'd botch the next one.

[IceCap]

Come on. If Manziel played for, say, Northern Illinois, you'd have been the first one to condemn the NCAA's by-laws. Yet because he's an SEC player your clear anti-SEC bias forces you to play the "why didn't the hammer come down harder?" card. So should we all take it that you're only anti-NCAA when the target's the conferences or team or player you don't personally like? That the next time you come down on the NCAA for enforcing its own rules and you call those rules draconian or ridiculous or what have you that we should just write you off?

Since this story broke there's been nothing put forth that confirms that Manziel was guilty of the crime he was accused of committing. We have people who have said they saw him do it, but you know as well as I do that's nothing more then a "he said/she said," which is not enough to come down on someone with. There was supposedly video evidence that TMZ and/or ESPN were trying to get a hold of, but nothing has come from that.

There's certainly a discussion to be had about the appropriateness of the NCAA's rulebook, but in this case it seems to be a non-issue. There was no evidence linking Manziel to the wrongdoing he was accused of. However much you want to believe he's guilty you can't condemn him without that evidence.

[dfwabel]

Threre is not real denial that hey signed items. The debate he and the school are claiming is that he did not accept money. The sources Rovell have say otherwise.

He is too self-destructive a young man to last the season.

[Needschat]

Dez Bryant lies about having a LEGAL dinner and is suspended a year.

Johnny signs memorabilia - for pay, don't kid yourself - and is suspended for a half?

Deion Sanders asked on Twitter for investigating the investigators. I say it's time for the top powers in football to "salute" the NCAA and form their own, for pay, league!

[Lights Out]

Come on. If Manziel played for, say, Northern Illinois, you'd have been the first one to condemn the NCAA's by-laws. Yet because he's an SEC player your clear anti-SEC bias forces you to play the "why didn't the hammer come down harder?" card. So should we all take it that you're only anti-NCAA when the target's the conferences or team or player you don't personally like? That the next time you come down on the NCAA for enforcing its own rules and you call those rules draconian or ridiculous or what have you that we should just write you off?

I do think the NCAA's rules are mostly ridiculous, but as long as they're in place, they need to be fairly and consistently enforced - which they aren't, by any stretch of the imagination.

If they want to be lenient and let things slide, they need to do that consistently. That means no more incidents like the women's golfer who got fined for washing her car.

If they want to be hard-asses, they need to do that with every case. That means no more joke half-game suspensions when other players have been punished more severely for lesser "crimes."

The NCAA wants it both ways depending on which one's convenient for them, and the end result has been a completely illogical enforcement system that invites complaints of bias, unfairness, and incompetence.

[IceCap]

Come on. If Manziel played for, say, Northern Illinois, you'd have been the first one to condemn the NCAA's by-laws. Yet because he's an SEC player your clear anti-SEC bias forces you to play the "why didn't the hammer come down harder?" card. So should we all take it that you're only anti-NCAA when the target's the conferences or team or player you don't personally like? That the next time you come down on the NCAA for enforcing its own rules and you call those rules draconian or ridiculous or what have you that we should just write you off?

I do think the NCAA's rules are mostly ridiculous...

Which is where I have a bit of a problem with your position. I would bet you'd be championing Manziel if he didn't play for a high profile school in one of those evvvvvvillll "blue blood" conferences you've made no mistake about...aggressively disliking. If he played for a mid-major trying to make it to the next level, or even, say, TCU, you'd go on about how the NCAA rulebook is nonsensical and good on him, and so on. It's Texas A&M though. It's the SEC. So of course you're angry that he didn't get the book thrown at him.

but as long as they're in place, they need to be fairly and consistently enforced - which they aren't, by any stretch of the imagination.

Yeah, thing is we're dealing with abstracts. Short of the clearly evil crimes (like letting a former assistant coach use your program as a rape factory) it's all very nebulous. Ok, signing memorabilia is against the rules. So is giving a recruit a dollar to pay for a pop from a vending machine. Which is worse? On top of that you've got no set system of punishment. There's nothing that says "for offence X the guilty party sits out Y number of games." So EVERYTHING is up to interpretation. You'll NEVER get that system to be evenly and consistently enforced. It's just not possible.

Then there's the small fact that in this case there's no real evidence that Manziel actually did something wrong. If I asked someone to show me proof that he's guilty of what he's being accused of all I'd get is rumour, speculation, and hearsay.

[dbadefense1990]

My God is the NCAA a friggin joke.

At first, I thought Manziel got a suspension of half a season. Nope, all he got was a suspension of half a game. How does this get even measured to begin with?

Betcha if Manziel had USC connections, the Trojans would have received the "death penalty" on the spot. Though I'm not surprised at yet another wrist-slapping punishment taken at another non PAC-12 school.

[rvrdgsfn]

So Johnny Football gets a slap on the wrist? How is missing half a game going to help? Why bother? Maybe this is the start of the crumbling of the NCAA but I seriously doubt it. What a joke penalty.

[OnWis97]

I'm too tired/lazy to write about it all that well, so try not to hold the poor craftsmanship against me too much here, but I feel like the whole culture of relishing others' NCAA violations, which at this point is inextricably just as much a part of being a modern college football fan as eating chicken wings on a Saturday, is not just about wanting a competitive advantage for your rival team but also part of a general culture of public shaming that, if you ask me, has really come of age since the economy collapsed. Not that it's a new phenomenon -- it's just Victorianism with broadband -- but with the sizable increase in fear and loathing brought on by everyone losing their jobs, pensions, and/or basic dignity from powers far above us, we're all just fighting to swim upstream with no qualms about holding a few heads under the water along the way and finishing the jobs on some other poor bastards before anyone can finish the job on us. We pretty much live it every day, so it's no surprise that we'd carry it over into sports.

When people are outraged over some drunk redneck saying n'igger, most of those people aren't reacting from a deep sense of pain that comes with having taken that word and everything it carries, because if you crunch the obvious numbers here, most people on this earth just can't know that pain. What they do know is they want to see punishment, they want scarlet letters, they want someone brought down from a surely ill-gotten high, and they want to loudly demonstrate that they're on the right side of the line before someone can catch them on the wrong side. Gawker traffics almost entirely in exposing people for having said or done one unacceptable thing or another, and it's not out of any moral imperative so much as an imperative to generate pageviews to in turn sell advertising. This guy got drunk, that guy sent dick pictures, it's the same dumb crap any old jerkass does but presented not with a wink and a "guess they're just like us" but with continuing team coverage until they've been broken down and shamed and sullied forever.

And so it goes with college sports, where we take the basic live-vicariously principle of Liking Sports and extrapolate it out to wanting everyone else's sins to be revealed before our (which is to say The Program's) sins can be revealed first. And when it happens, what a glorious day it is, to mock the exposed and the crudeness of their sins ("all this over tattoos? Goodness, what animals!"), to see someone fall from a great height, all the while hoping nobody finds out about our (which is to say The Program's) unfortunate misunderstandings involving forged exams, or free cars, or a certain incident which we'll say wasn't necessarily not rape.

It's an awful way to manifest an interest in sports because extrapolated, it's an awful way to live your life. And that's why liking college sports is increasingly awful.

I could just as easily go the other way on this.

It seems to me there is an element to the "pay them" argument that is derivative of the belief that everyone that's good at football and basketball deserves to be rich. And they should not have to wait. Maurice Clarett bought in and it probably kept him from ever being rich.

[ninersdd]

Suspended for a half of a game is just a joke. Why not the full game?

I do remember after the Arizona-UCLA brawl in 2011, guys were ejected from the game right before the half, and I think the players were suspended for the first half against UW the next week, so that equaled a full game suspended. Just suspending Manziel for a half seems silly.

[OnWis97]

First of all, if he's not guilty, why would they suspend him after investigating him? Surely they'd have found nothing wrong, right?

Second of all, even if he didn't take money, he still violated NCAA rules just by signing the autographs:

Title:12.5.2.1 - Advertisements and Promotions After Becoming a Student-Athlete.

After becoming a student-athlete, an individual shall not be eligible for participation in intercollegiate athletics if the individual:

(a) Accepts any remuneration for or permits the use of his or her name or picture to advertise, recommend or promote directly the sale or use of a commercial product or service of any kind; or

( Receives remuneration for endorsing a commercial product or service through the individual's use of such product or service.

Title:12.5.2.2 - Use of a Student-Athlete's Name or Picture Without Knowledge or Permission.

If a student-athlete's name or picture appears on commercial items (e.g., T-shirts, sweatshirts, serving trays, playing cards, posters) or is used to promote a commercial product sold by an individual or agency without the student-athlete's knowledge or permission, the student-athlete (or the institution acting on behalf of the student-athlete) is required to take steps to stop such an activity in order to retain his or her eligibility for intercollegiate athletics. Such steps are not required in cases in which a student-athlete's photograph is sold by an individual or agency (e.g., private photographer, news agency) for private use. (Revised: 1/11/97, 5/12/05)

OK, well if he signed autographs and did not get paid (or,rather, it could not be proven), then it's a minor violation and one-half is not unprecedented.

In the late 90s, Mateen Cleeves got a half a game for underage drinking...that half game happened to be at Wisconsin so I was there. It was funny to watch the student section, 90% of whom probably drank more than Mateen, chant "alcoholic". Was it a weird punishment? Sure, but it probably fit the crime.

[HedleyLamarr]

First of all, if he's not guilty, why would they suspend him after investigating him? Surely they'd have found nothing wrong, right?

Second of all, even if he didn't take money, he still violated NCAA rules just by signing the autographs:

Title:12.5.2.1 - Advertisements and Promotions After Becoming a Student-Athlete.

After becoming a student-athlete, an individual shall not be eligible for participation in intercollegiate athletics if the individual:

(a) Accepts any remuneration for or permits the use of his or her name or picture to advertise, recommend or promote directly the sale or use of a commercial product or service of any kind; or

( Receives remuneration for endorsing a commercial product or service through the individual's use of such product or service.

Title:12.5.2.2 - Use of a Student-Athlete's Name or Picture Without Knowledge or Permission.

If a student-athlete's name or picture appears on commercial items (e.g., T-shirts, sweatshirts, serving trays, playing cards, posters) or is used to promote a commercial product sold by an individual or agency without the student-athlete's knowledge or permission, the student-athlete (or the institution acting on behalf of the student-athlete) is required to take steps to stop such an activity in order to retain his or her eligibility for intercollegiate athletics. Such steps are not required in cases in which a student-athlete's photograph is sold by an individual or agency (e.g., private photographer, news agency) for private use. (Revised: 1/11/97, 5/12/05)

OK, well if he signed autographs and did not get paid (or,rather, it could not be proven), then it's a minor violation and one-half is not unprecedented.

In the late 90s, Mateen Cleeves got a half a game for underage drinking...that half game happened to be at Wisconsin so I was there. It was funny to watch the student section, 90% of whom probably drank more than Mateen, chant "alcoholic". Was it a weird punishment? Sure, but it probably fit the crime.

Ding ding ding.....someone gets it.

Folks aren't getting butthurt because he only got suspended for a half. They're getting butthurt because they were hoping/wanting there to be more than what was actually there.

I'm surprised by something else: How quick the NCAA investigated....and closed....the Manziel case. Meanwhile, it seems like it's been 2-3 years that the NCAA has been "about to release their findings and punishment" for Miami.