Netflix’s “Untold: Johnny Football” a raw roller coaster from start to finish
“Untold: Johnny Football” offers a rare glimpse into Johnny Manziel’s meteoric rise and fall.
By: Bossman Slim
“Untold: Johnny Football” is a documentary all SEC fans should watch (B&S Graphics Dept.)
“People would ask me, ‘do you like the nickname Johnny Football?’ I f***in’ loved it. I thought it was awesome. JFF: Johnny F***in’ Football, what’s up?”
How ‘bout that ride in?
A quote from Alan’s speech from The Hangover seems like the right way to start this review of Netflix’s “Untold: Johnny Football,” released today. Just like that movie, Johnny’s life has been one helluva ride to this point, for good and for bad.
Full disclosure, I’m an Aggie. I was born to bleed maroon and attended A&M for three years, graduating in 2014. That’s right - I was there for A&M’s transition to the SEC and the era of Johnny Football. And what a glorious time it was to be an Aggie. I went to College GameDay preceding A&M’s first game in the SEC against Florida, then sat in the second deck of Kyle Field as Johnny Manziel put the mighty Gators on the ropes in his first game. I was in Tuscaloosa - incognito in the student section - for the now legendary Alabama win. My cover was quickly blown when the Aggies went up 20-0 in the first quarter, and I was yelling at the top of my lungs. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt euphoria like I did after the Aggies win in Tuscaloosa in 2012. I’d just watched David take down Goliath - and I was team David. I still have the issue of The Battalion, A&M’s student paper, commemorating the win.
I digress - the story of my time at A&M during the Johnny years is for another day. This is about the favored son of Texas A&M, Johnny Manziel: his rise, his fall, his struggles, and his still-being-written redemption.
Buckle up. From small-town kid to Scooby Doo, Cabo to Kingsbury, Uncle Nate to the crash in Cleveland, this documentary touches on all of it.
The doc starts with Manziel talking about his time growing up in Kerrville and going to Tivy High School, home of the Antlers. It’s pure Texas Friday Night Lights. “Tivy Fight Never Dies,” reads the sign in the locker room. The program was built on discipline, striving for better and doing your job, all things Manziel responded to, and that shows up in his stats. Manziel was a high school legend in Texas before he ever went to college, but his size prevented some major programs from recruiting him. It wasn’t until late in the recruiting process that A&M offered, and he eventually accepted.
The locker room at Johnny Manziel’s high school, Tivy High in Kerrville, Texas (Photo: KENS5 San Antonio)
After arriving on campus, Manziel got in some trouble right before his breakout season, getting into a fight in College Station’s bar district, Northgate, that resulted in an arrest. After some discipline (maybe the last discipline he ever received from the A&M coaching staff), Manziel was back on that field and the rest is history. Johnny burst onto the scene after a few games and cemented his status as the Heisman Trophy front-runner after the Aggies took down the mighty Tide in Tuscaloosa late in the 2012 season. This isn’t included in the documentary, but during that season, one of A&M’s only two losses was to LSU. Even though the Tigers won that game, LSU star defensive end Sam Montgomery knew Johnny Football was the real deal. After the Aggies upset the Tide, Montgomery was asked to react to that news and famously said of Manziel, “Heisman, give it to him.”
The legend of JFF only grew from that moment on as the Aggies would go on to torch their final three opponents that year, including a Bob Stoops-led Oklahoma team 41-13 in the Cotton Bowl. One of the best stories of the documentary is from Kliff Kingsbury, who was the Aggies offensive coordinator in 2012. He tells the story of Manziel’s exploits the week of the Mississippi State game…only to watch Manziel put on one of his finest performances of the season.
With his newfound stardom, though, came a new Manziel. He took on the persona of “JFF” and shed the small-town Tivy roots that kept him grounded. It’s hard to blame him, he was on top of the world, no one knew how to handle that type of meteoric rise in the age of social media, it was all new. His coaches didn’t know, his parents didn’t know, his friends and teammates didn’t know. Drake, Floyd Mayweather, Justin Timberlake, LeBron, actresses, models, late-night talk show hosts - everyone wanted a piece of Johnny Football.
And that’s where the downfall began. The fame got to his head and he embraced the larger-than-life figure of Johnny F***in’ Football and lost track of Johnny Manziel. Someone he’s still trying to find to this day.
From the looks of it, Johnny is doing much better, as relationships with his family have mended, he’s left his athletic career behind and shoved the persona of JFF back into the shadows. The most poignant part of the documentary comes at the end where he discusses the depths of his depression after flaming out with the Cleveland Browns and out of the NFL. He tried to take his own life, but thankfully the gun malfunctioned.
I’m darn glad he’s still with us. Manziel’s struggles have been well documented, but it was especially harrowing to hear exactly how bad it got straight from the horse’s mouth. He’s seen the darkness, and he’s still here, walking back into the light. Many can learn from where he was and where he is now, and how he’s overcome many of his mental health struggles.
Manziel’s time in Cleveland came with great promise, ultimately ending in disappointment (Photo: Peter G. Aiken, Getty Images)
Overall, the documentary is fantastic and absolutely worth a watch. We haven’t seen much of Manziel in recent years, by his own design, and probably for the better. But there has always been curiosity about how everything really went down at A&M beyond. This documentary gives us a real, raw glimpse into the Johnny Football story. Frankly, though, it barely scratched the itch. There’s so much more that could have been discussed like the Cotton Bowl win, going more in-depth into the 2013 season that fell short of expectations, the Duke comeback in the 2013 Chick-Fil-A Bowl, the issues in Cleveland, just how much the 2012 season meant to A&M as they were joining the vaunted SEC, and his attempted comebacks. I’m ready for the 4-part or 10-part HBO series. And if that ever got greenlit, I’d hope to see Kevin Sumlin and former A&M president R. Bowen Loftin participate, because Lord knows they’d have a lot to say.
As an Aggie, especially one that experienced Johnny Mania as a student, most of us know a lot more about Johnny’s story than the general public. We’ve rooted for him at his highest highs and stuck by him at his lowest lows. We knew about his legendary on-field exploits at Tivy and knew he was committed to Oregon before landing in College Station. We know the bars he frequented on Northgate, we’ve heard the stories about the wild locker room culture, and we’ve seen the best of Johnny from buying an entire bar a round when he got drafted to when he returns to Aggieland and treats us all like family, no matter what’s going on in his life. I know Aggies return the favor - though it’s been complicated at times, we’ve never waivered that Johnny was our guy.
Manziel was recently inducted into the Texas A&M Hall of Fame and highlighted that special relationship with Aggieland:
“Every time I ask myself what I love or what really my passion is in life, I always find my way back to this school and back to this city. I think it’s really funny for me; When I as an 18-year-old kid, I used to drive really fast away from College Station, and now, coming here to do this or anytime I come to a game, I drive even faster coming back into the city limits.
This place has done absolute wonders for me and put me in a position to where I can do anything I want to do in life. I am so blessed and so thankful for the Letterman’s Committee to allow me to be in this prestigious class. I am thankful to each and every Aggie in this room who never gave up on me when times weren’t very good for myself. It would be very easy to turn your back on some of the things I was doing in my life and I live with a lot of regret, but at the same time, I live with a lot of pride of being an Aggie and what this school means to me and what it molded me into today.”
Knowing what we know now from the documentary, it’s even sweeter that he accepted this award in person and not posthumously.
We’ll see you at Johnny Manziel’s Money Bar, Johnny. Go watch the documentary, and you can watch the Netflix trailer for “Untold: Johnny Football,” and Manziel’s full A&M Hall of Fame induction speech below:
