Give Johnny Manziel this: He’s managed to perfect the image of a sympathetic jerk. 

That isn’t easy. Just ask Alex Rodriguez, who has dedicated the past 15 years of his life in vain (in every sense of the word) pursuit of America’s most likable lout status.

Manziel gets the nod because he’s a rebel with a cause. The truth that the NCAA is a sham and the form of amateurism it is supposedly charged with protecting is merely an excuse to print money is gaining wider acceptance because the reigning Heisman Trophy winner is causing trouble.

Johnny Football reportedly got some cash for writing his Johnny Hancock on some memorabilia. The NCAA is looking into it. Manziel and his family are lawyering up. ESPN commentators are exposing NCAA hypocrisy. Labeled a jerk for his off-field behavior just a few weeks ago, Manziel is now being hailed as a ground-breaker (one columnist compared him to Rosa Parks this week) for challenging this archaic system of amateurism, when in fact he’s yet to actually do anything to this point except break an increasingly unpopular rule.

Normally, a firestorm like this would collapse into itself once Manziel is unfairly banned by the NCAA and has his Heisman revoked and the NCAA and its co-conspirators go back to the mint and tell the labor they’re lucky to get tuition, room and board.

Ah, the co-conspirators, aka the power conferences. Do you really think they’re going to give up the golden goose? Have you seen the television deals they’ve been signing over the past couple of years? Have you noticed the scope and breadth of the transplant surgeries they’ve undergone over the last couple of years? Did it amaze you how quickly they curbed the NCAA’s power when they found out how much more money could be made with a “playoff,” after years and years of insisting a playoff could never work? 

But the golden goose is dangerously close to being cooked, and it isn’t Manziel who turned up the heat. The NCAA is currently the defendant in an antitrust lawsuit filed by former UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon and joined by former college athletes (including Bill Russell) and six current NCAA football players, though not Manziel. The plaintiffs are asking for a cut of the billions the NCAA has made from using their likenesses on merchandise such as video games.

The NCAA (a not-for-profit organization, believe it or not) and its member schools don’t know amateurism nearly as well as they know greed, and as Jay Bilas demonstrated so beautifully, they certainly don’t cherish the former as much as the latter. Schools are as likely to voluntarily let athletes cut into their profit margin as they are to tell professors to stop publishing.

O’Bannon’s lawsuit could leave them with no choice. He would be the true hero if it does, but Manziel would probably get most of the credit.

That would be a shame since he was probably just being a rich kid who knowingly broke a rule to make a few bucks rather than a crusader trying to bring an outdated, unfair rule into the national spotlight. But at this point, who cares who gets the glory?

Well, Alex Rodriguez maybe.

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