Larry Brown Sports

Johnny Manziel says he is taking a break from Twitter.

The Texas A&M star quarterback has been overwhelmed with the attention he’s received and decided that leaving Twitter is the proper course of action for now.

“I’ve kind of just shut it all off,” Manziel told ESPN’s Mark Schlabach. “With how the media has been with me for a while, I just shut everything off. As of [Monday], I said I was done with [Twitter] for however long. It’s fun to have, but it can get to be distracting at points.”

Manziel won the Heisman Trophy after his record-breaking redshirt freshman season for the Aggies. Pictures of him partying at a New York club emerged shortly after the ceremony, and he has steadily remained in the news ever since.

“I’m surprised to [see] how the attention has continued through the offseason. I guess I thought it would die off and slow down a little bit, but it really hasn’t,” he told Schlabach.

It’s been the exact opposite; the buzz surrounding Manziel has only grown this offseason. The first signs of Manziel’s personality emerged after pictures of him partying in a Scooby Doo costume on Halloween were publicized. He went on to beat Alabama in Tuscaloosa, win the Heisman Trophy, and destroy Oklahoma in a bowl game.

Manziel did the Top 10 on Letterman, played golf with the Jonas Brothers, sat courtside at NBA games, showed off money he won at a casino, and he continued rubbing elbows with various celebrities after winning the Heisman. He became so popular that he began taking online courses this semester to avoid all the attention he receives on campus.

Taking online courses seems to have allowed Manziel more time to party; he was spotted partying at Mardi Gras in February, and he was in Mexico last week for spring break. He caused a huge stir when he was seen with a fake tattoo of the Texas Longhorns logo on his torso. He admitted to ESPN that was done as a joke.

“It was just a fun deal,” Manziel said. “Somebody dared me to do it, and we thought it would be funny.”

If his goal was to freak out Aggies fans, then he certainly succeeded.

Manziel may be taking a break from Twitter, but that might not be enough to stop the events of his personal life from being shared online. As long as he keeps partying or hanging out with celebrities, there will be others sharing the news and photos on their Twitter or Instagram accounts. He needs to cut out the partying if he wants his life to become more private. I don’t think that will fit his style.

Johnny Manziel may be spending his offseason living it up and doing seemingly anything that will put a smile on his face, but that does not mean he has lost his competitive edge. Texas A&M held a spring scrimmage on Saturday and Manziel looked a bit rusty. He threw three interceptions, the last of which came on a short pass into the end zone as he was rolling to his right. That’s when things reportedly got a bit heated.

According to the Houston Chronicle, a graduate assistant jumped up and down with excitement after seeing the defense intercept Manziel’s pass. The GA was supposedly within arm’s length of Manziel — who was not in a good — so he shoved him. Players and coaches who were standing nearby quickly interjected and separated the two.

Don’t let the reigning Heisman Trophy winner fool you. He may be spending a lot of time sitting courtside at NBA games, dominating the casino and hanging with the Jonas Brothers, but it sounds like Manziel still cares about winning. If he’s still dressing up in Mardi Gras attire in a few months, then we can start worrying. But for now, don’t jump up and down in Johnny’s face after he throws an interception. Johnny don’t like that.

H/T Saturday Down South

Marshall Henderson and Johnny Manziel have bonded over Twitter in the past few days and are in the process of forming one of the most perfect friendships in all of collegiate athletics.

It all started with a tweet from Johnny Football to the Ole Miss guard on Saturday that resulted in a response from Henderson a day later:

@jmanziel2 preciate ya big dog!!! ima be in college station for chili fest if we dont make the final 4, gonna have ta link up

— marshall henderson (@NativeFlash22) March 24, 2013

Chilifest 2013, baby. It is going down. The meetup of the century. Henderson and Manziel tearing up the chili festival in Snook, Texas. Slamming cornbread and chili bowls while listening to country music.

Seriously though, these two seem like perfect friends. Manziel doesn’t have the villain persona that Henderson does, but he has become the partying badboy who refuses to make his life private. Henderson also appears to be a party animal, and he has been leading Ole Miss to upset wins. Both were top newcomers in the SEC and led their respective underdog teams to surprising success. Manziel is much better in his sport than Henderson is, but the two seem to have a lot in common.

Considering he has not played in an actual football game since 2011, former LSU cornerback Tyrann Mathieu put together a pretty impressive showing at the NFL Combine last month. He ran a 4.50 in the 40-yard dash and reportedly held his own in drills, so his actual performance probably didn’t do much to affect his stock.

As we know, Mathieu’s NFL prospects hinge more on whether or not teams are willing to take a risk on him given his history of off-field issues. According to the artist formerly known as the Honey Badger, any team that drafts him would be selecting the best player from the Combine.

“I feel like I was the best one there, by far,” Mathieu confidently told TMZ on Tuesday. “I put a lot of hard work into it. I just tried to go out there confident in my game.”

Between these comments and the ones he made about shutting down Calvin Johnson, it seems like Mathieu feels like he can talk his way into the NFL. He was also asked which NFL team he would most enjoy playing for.

“It’d have to be the 49ers, just as a fan” he said. “They’ve got a pretty good organization. They’ve got a pretty good dynasty that they’re trying to pursue. It’d be great to be a part of the 49ers club.”

No team is going to wager their future on Mathieu, so a team that is already in good shape defensively like the Niners could be one of the ones to show interest in him. However, I’m sure he’d be happy to play for any team in the NFL. With how quickly Mathieu’s stock has fallen, just hearing his name called in April would be a success.

Does Texas A&M star quarterback Johnny Manziel really have a tattoo supporting his rival school?

Photos of Manziel on vacation hit the ‘net this week, and one in particular is getting attention. A reader sent in the above photo to Busted Coverage that appears to show Manziel with the Texas Longhorns logo tattooed on his torso.

There is plenty of speculation that the tattoo is a fake photoshop job. We’re not experts in the field of identifying phony photos, but we do know that Manziel is a Texas fan. Just look at what it says in his Texas A&M bio:

Manziel, whom A&M coach Kevin Sumlin hasn’t yet made available for interviews this season, grew up a Texas Longhorns fan (he often sported UT gear around Tyler), but Texas didn’t heavily recruit him. In fact Florida coach Will Muschamp told his players during halftime of this year’s A&M game that UT, where Muschamp had previously served as defensive coordinator, only wanted Manziel as a defensive back.

That’s probably enough to make the fans in College Station want to puke, but that’s life. This may very well be a fake photo, but it wouldn’t be the first time we have seen a college athlete with a regrettable tattoo from a rival team.

UPDATE: Manziel later said on Twitter that the tattoo was fake.

FAKE tattoo..

— Johnny Manziel (@JManziel2) March 13, 2013

Does that mean Manziel got a fake tattoo of a longhorn on his torso? If so, then he really does enjoy messing with his fans.

If you’re like us and wondering how Johnny Manziel has so much time to set-jet around the country while he is still in school, this might explain things.

Manziel, the reigning Heisman Trophy winner, told reporters Monday at the Davey O’Brien Award dinner that he is only taking online classes this semester.

Brent Zwerneman of the San Antonio Express-News reports that Manziel says he is taking all four of his classes online. The Texas A&M quarterback reportedly was hounded by so many autograph and picture requests that he switched out of an English class that was on campus early in the semester. As a result, he reportedly said he is only on campus about once a month.

Manziel has been all over the place since winning the Heisman. He was seen sitting courtside at a Mavericks-Heat NBA game, he flashed cash inside an Oklahoma casino, he played golf with the Jonas Brothers, and he went to Mardi Gras.

Aware that his reputation as a partier had been growing, Manziel shared a photograph on his Instagram account last week of him at his desk facing a computer where he appeared to be doing work.

“Studying for this first SPMT test (for those of you who think I’m never in school)” he wrote as his caption.

Manziel sure is taking advantage of the flexibility his online course schedule allows him, but it does kind of stink that his fame prevents him from attending class like a typical student.

Johnny Manziel was down in New Orleans last weekend to take part in some of the Super Bowl festivities (of course he was), and it appears that he liked it so much he decided to stick around. Either that, or the Heisman Trophy winner went home and decided to venture back to The Big Easy for some Mardi Gras fun.

Mardi Gras takes place on Tuesday, so New Orleans was already buzzing over the weekend. As you can see, Manziel was hanging with Ole Miss linebacker Denzel Nkemdiche and LSU running back Jeremy Hill, along with a few others. You could say that the crew was kickin’ it SEC style, but it comes as no surprise that Manziel was the most geeked out in Mardi Gras apparel.

Read The Rest of the Story…