Johnny Manziel Says Every Big School Paid Players Before NIL; His Dad Asked for $3 Million from Texas A&M Aggies

Former Texas A&M Aggies star quarterback Johnny Manziel detailed his college football experience on Shannon Sharpe’s podcast, “Club Shay Shay“.

He started off by saying that his dad requested a $3 million deal from the Texas A&M Aggies and head coach Kevin Sumlin unbeknownst to him. Manziel supposedly would have stayed for two more years, but he didn’t find out from his dad until five years after the fact.

“But my dad went and had a meeting with Kevin Sumlin. And pretty much went to him man to man and was like, ‘We’ll take $3 million and we’ll stay for the next two years.’ And my dad says this is as true today as he did when he told me.”

“He comes to Sumlin, he asks him for X amount, Sumlin pfff,” Johnny Manziel said. “He had this ego about him that what we built, ‘we,’ was all him. And then you start that next year, OK, I leave, decide to go to the NFL. This deal doesn’t work. Kevin Sumlin kind of blows us off, we can do this without you type of vibe.

“So the fall comes around, 2014, A&M football season. Kenny Hill is named our starting quarterback. We win our first five games of the year, we’re 5-0, we’re Top 10 in the country. I ain’t getting no love in the program.”

Legendary Texas A&M QB Johnny Manziel explained that everyone was getting paid in his day

After Shannon Sharpe inquired more about the idea of a $3 million payment, Johnny Manziel explained that this type of deal was commonplace during his era of college football.

“Went on for 30, 40 years before,” Johnny Manziel said. “It was the same way that was happening when you were getting recruited back in the day.

“Just keep it in cash, throw it somewhere. We’ll get it later. We don’t need it right now. But for my security if something happens for two years down the road. And my dad did this without me knowing. And I ain’t mad at him about it for nothing. It’s the way the business worked back then. There was a bag man,” Manziel said.

There was a bag man at LSU. There was a bag man at ‘Bama. There was a bag man at every school around the country if you were competing for a national title. It is what it was, and it was always that way until we’re into the NIL portion of everything now, the way it should be.”

The paying of college players in the pre-NIL era was certainly an open secret, but the blatant discussion of a deal on the table with a number attached to it is still a rarity.

The argument that Johnny Manziel was worth the money for the Texas A&M Aggies could’ve been made

Johnny Manziel won the Heisman Trophy as a freshman in 2012 and was one of the most electric college football players in history during his two years of playing with the Texas A&M Aggies.

Manziel amassed 7,820 yards passing in those two years with 63 touchdowns and 22 interceptions. Manziel’s nearly 70% completion rate and ability to go off-script and make plays out of nothing helped him and the Aggies take down the vaunted No. 1 ranked Alabama Crimson Tide.

9 years ago today, Johnny Manziel upset #1 Alabama pic.twitter.com/k8KPIalr8g

— Athlete Swag (@AthleteSwag) November 10, 2021

They finished with just two losses and a huge 41-13 win over the Oklahoma Sooners in the Cotton Bowl in an era that predated an absurd number of bowl opt-outs.

Johnny Manziel was given the nickname “Johnny Football” and his style of play was must-see television. Even if the Aggies didn’t win a national championship, the eyes and profits brought in by a figure like Manziel may have been worth the $3 million in and of itself.

#PlayOfTheDay (2013): Johnny Manziel makes re-defines pocket presence as he hops, jumps, and escapes his way into a Texas A&M touchdown against Duke. pic.twitter.com/YhA80wUwI9

— Pick Six Previews (@PickSixPreviews) October 8, 2020

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