The NFL draft has become must-see-TV for a lot of people, and New York Times pro football writer John Branch does not approve. In fact, he implies that excessive public focus may have ruined Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Johnny Manziel's NFL career and life. Branch gained valuable space on the front of Monday’s New York Times with "In Manziel, a Draft Machine’s Human Cost.”
The timing is awkward, given that Manziel was charged today with misdemeanor assault related to domestic violence. The former Cleveland Browns QB was accused by his ex-girlfriend of hitting her and threatening to kill her. Branch buried the grand jury investigation near the bottom of the story, which excoriated how "The N.F.L. draft -- our coverage of it and our appetite for it" shows how fans "are willing to dehumanize the games they love, turning people into products and lives into entertainment."
It was intriguingly painful television, as it is intended to be. The first round of the 2014 N.F.L. draft was underway, and the dazzling college quarterback Johnny Manziel was in the green room, stuck in prime-time purgatory. Twenty-one teams came and went, each choosing someone other than Manziel. For nearly three hours, he fidgeted in front of unblinking cameras. He played with a bottle cap, drank from a cup, checked his phone and excused himself for the privacy of the restroom.
Someone started a #BeforeManzielGetsDrafted hashtag on Twitter. The N.F.L. posted #SadManziel??? on its own Twitter account. Those two tags shot to the top of Twitter’s trending list. Everyone, even the league, was having fun at Manziel’s expense. He was 21.
Two years later, Manziel, the highest-profile member of the 2014 draft class, chosen 22nd, is out of the N.F.L., without a team, an agent or an endorsement. He has addiction problems and a family that has worried all along whether Manziel would survive, literally, the fame and fortune bestowed upon him. While his name is invoked as a cautionary tale, it is often used as a punch line and as TMZ click bait. He is the sports world’s Lindsay Lohan -- a child star admonished for squandering all that talent, all those chances, all before growing up.
The moralizing soon began.
The N.F.L. draft -- our coverage of it and our appetite for it -- is a cultural phenomenon. But it also shows, as much as any sporting “event” in this country does, how fans and leagues -- and even the players themselves in this age of social media -- are willing to dehumanize the games they love, turning people into products and lives into entertainment.
The draft is the apex of football’s off-season, which used to be a time to watch basketball and baseball. It is now a time to view future N.F.L. players as livestock. It starts with the N.F.L. Combine, where players are stripped down (literally), measured for size and tested for speed and strength. Sometimes they are asked if they are gay. This is how teams decide who is fit for the league.
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Knowing what we know about things like concussions and addiction; the possibility of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E.; and the likelihood of a shortened life expectancy, you might think that we have moved past viewing football players as interchangeable parts to be haggled or numbers to be calculated.
We have not. Instead, we draft them again, this time for our personal fantasy football teams.
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Manziel is the latest example, playing out in real time as another draft approaches. To read online comments and social media posts about Manziel’s troubles -- arrests, parties, rehabilitation -- is to explore the underbelly of fandom, dismissive and cruel. Schadenfreude is the flip side of reverence, and perhaps a stronger attraction.
Branch seemingly was building up to a big point, but his piece ended up with a whimper.
All we really know now, days away from another year of roster restocking and another group of young men stuck in the green room and another heaping of expectations placed upon the whole proceeding, is that Manziel is a bust in the vernacular of the N.F.L. draft. He is already teased for that and will be, perhaps, always remembered for that.
National Review’s Jim Geraghty in his Monday Morning Jolt raked Branch for his petulant liberal naivete:
Name a form of popular culture that does not turn people into products and lives into entertainment. Obviously, Hollywood does. Likewise theater and dance. (You want to talk about long-term negative health effects? Let’s talk about professional ballet.) Music, in all its forms. (Has this guy never seen any episode of Behind the Music?) ....When are we allowed to be mad at a guy for taking one of life’s golden opportunities and throwing it away?....If, as Branch contends, it’s cruel to mock Manziel, is it fair to mock anyone?....Why are NFL fans the villains here?
Geraghty went on:
Branch, the Times’ football columnist, tries to shame his readers for enjoying reading about the draft, caring about which players their team drafts, and apparently not thinking about them as human beings enough...
SB Nation’s Dan Kadar was also puzzled by Branch’s blame-shifting and tweeted: "I think the New York Times just blamed NFL Draft coverage on why Johnny Manziel has addiction issues."
