COMMENTARY

Is Johnny Football ready for football?

— If you’re Johnny Manziel, you know you’ve hit the big-time world of cross-over glitterati when you play a round of Christmas Eve golf with two of the three Jonas Brothers, kings of the ’tween scene.

Or pose for a photo with actress Megan Fox after a Tonight Show interview.

Or have Anne Hathaway, Hollywood’s current It Girl, gush about you during a segment of Late Night with David Letterman.

Or climb on stage to croon verses of “Beer, Bait and Ammo” with country star Kevin Fowler.

So welcome to Manziel’s post-Heisman Trophy world. Texas A&M’s celebrity redshirt freshman quarterback settles into a more familiar environment today at Cowboys Stadium, when his Aggies meet Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl.

Manziel’s teenaged, all-sport universe broadened last month, days after he turned 20 and became the first freshman to win college football’s most prestigious award.

Now, when he buys himself a birthday present, the sporting world takes notice. That’s because his personal gift was sitting courtside at the Dallas Mavericks-Miami Heat game. It was just icing to cavort with LeBron James in the locker room and have “King James” tweet that Manziel was a “cool dude” to his 6.8 million followers.

Manziel documents all his fun times on his personal Twitter account, which has nearly 179,000 followers.

“We made time to do it,” Manziel said this week. “We are still focused. We are still going to practice, still going to workouts, still watching film, still doing the same stuff as always, [but] just enjoying a little bit along the way.”

Manziel now can easily drop famous names into a conversation because he knows them. Former Oklahoma standout Sam Bradford called to let him know he’d voted for Manziel for the Heisman. Manziel said he also planned to text Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o, the Heisman runner-up, for tips on how to beat the Sooners.

Texas A&M Coach Kevin Sumlin has allowed Manziel to enjoy his time as a college football superstar.

“Winning the Heisman should not be a punishment,” Sumlin said this week.

But with a near month-long banquet circuit, Heisman winners are more apt to suffer in their bowl games rather than excelling in them. The recent trend favors the winners since the past three guys to celebrate a Heisman also were bowl victors. Overall, they’ve gone an all-time 25-27. Texas A&M’s first Heisman winner, John David Crow, and his teammates lost 3-0 to Tennessee in the 1957 Gator Bowl.

Manziel will be the eighth Heisman winner to play in the Cotton. The Heisman has a 3-4 record in the Metroplex.

The Sooners have had mixed luck playing with or against a Heisman winner. Oklahoma’s Bradford and Jason White lost in the national championship game in the years they won the Heisman. Southern Cal’s’s Matt Leinart torched the Sooners to win the 2004 national title, weeks after he was honored in New York.

But the Sooners thwarted Florida State and its Heisman star, Chris Weinke, 13-2 to win the 2000 national title.

Oklahoma Coach Bob Stoops believes Manziel has had enough time to devote himself to football.

“It is a distraction early in December, but then that fades away coming into bowl preparations,” Stoops said. ”I’m sure Kevin [Sumlin] has done the same thing; you manage those couple of weeks as to what his obligations are. You go ahead and start to minimize those so that he can concentrate on playing ball.”

There is a celebrity downside. Manziel now walks with his head down to avoid undue attention. He also dons glasses. He promised that he started focusing on football in mid-December when he returned from his Tonight Show appearance.

“It’s been fun,” Manziel said. “It’s something I never thought I’d get a chance to do.”

Sports, Pages 18 on 01/04/2013

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