Untold: Johnny Football
Untold: Johnny Football chronicles the meteoric rise and meteoric fall of Johnny Manziel, who was the first freshman to win the Heisman Trophy. His freewheeling playstyle and personality meshed well on and off the field, as he had tremendous success in high school and college while also maintaining an active party life. Simultaneously, Texas A&M had just joined the Southeastern Conference and used Manziel as proof they belonged - and also to make millions of dollars off his name. But once drafted into the National Football League, he could not find that level of success without drastically changing who he was, and was released after only two years in the league.
Released 2023; Runtime 70 minutes
Concepts
- Burnout: Once in the NFL, Johnny lost his love of football. He was exhausted from the demands of being an NFL player (notably film study), stopped caring about football, and saw his performance decline, which ultimately led him to self-destruct so that his team would release him.
- Sport-Life Balance: A key issue that constantly came up with Johnny was balancing his sport performance with his partying. While he was largely able to do so, his partying did cause him to get into trouble with the law and with the NCAA on occasion, and he was not able to balance them successfully in the NFL.
- Substance Abuse: As he progressed through college and NFL, he increased his partying, and with it, his consumption of alcohol and illegal drugs; this may have well been his way to cope with stress and burnout. The combination of his substance abuse and burnout led him to attempt suicide.
- Economic Issues: At one point Johnny was offered $30,000 to sign autographs, which the NCAA prohibited. However, he saw how much Texas A&M and the NCAA were profiting off him, so his best friend and he devised a scheme for Johnny to circumvent NCAA rules so that he could see some of those profits too. He made thousands of dollars each month and traveled around the world in doing so.