Johnny Manziel is back in the new Fan Controlled Football league: 'I'm a little bored'
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Johnny Football is back.
Well, kind of.
Manziel, the former Heisman Trophy winner, is expected to start on Saturday with the Zappers in the Fan Controlled Football league — a new modified football league “where fans call the shots.”
“A big reason I’m here is I’m a little bored,” Manziel said, via USA Today. “I’ve been playing golf five days a week, hanging with my boys and playing cards and running around Scottsdale having a blast with a great group of friends that I’ve acquired out there. But I don’t have much of a schedule unless I create one, and I haven’t really created one.”
What is the FCF, and will Manziel use it to get back to the NFL?
The FCF is a four-team league, where players will compete in a one hour 7-on-7 matchup on a 50 yard field. Fans can pick the lineups and call plays while watching on Twitch in real time.
Manziel is by far the biggest name in the league.
Yet the former Texas A&M star isn’t trying to use the FCF as a springboard to get back into the NFL.
Not even close.
“This isn’t me trying to be a comeback, redemption-type of tour for me to go back and play football anymore moving forward,” Manziel said, via USA Today. “After I play here, I probably won’t pick up a football again for another year, two, or maybe even longer than that. This is just an opportunity that got presented to me to get around a bunch of good guys who I feel like we’ll make great business connections with and I’ll have a lot of fun while I’m doing it."
Manziel spent two seasons with the Cleveland Browns in 2014 and 2015, though played in just 14 games and started in eight. He was cut from the team weeks after a domestic abuse incident with his former girlfriend. The 28-year-old then had stints in the Canadian Football League and briefly in the Alliance of American Football before it shut down.
Though the FCF has a long way to go to actually succeed — every new football league has failed in recent years, for various reasons — Manziel is just trying to have fun with it.
“Even if I got an opportunity to go back to the NFL, I don’t think I would take it,” he said, via USA Today. "I don’t think it’s my path. I don’t think it’s what’s meant to be. I think there are a million other avenues and things I can do in life.
"I’ve been good as a football player in the past. I want to be good at something else in life, and I’ve tried to be patient and not force things like I have in the past and let life just come to me. And I’m a believer in something will pop up in my life that I know I’m going to love the way that I loved football at one point in time.
"For a time I didn’t like waking up and going and playing football anymore. I didn’t like the grind and going to work doing the whole thing. I fell out of love with it. So I think there’s going to be something that comes into my life moving forward. I don’t know exactly what it looks like or what it is, but in due time it’ll pop up and I’ll have that lightbulb moment again.”
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