Well this whole situation revolving around Johnny Manziel just keeps getting stranger and stranger.
Almost two weeks ago, former Texas A&M quarterback (and NFL bust) Johnny Manziel was scheduled to be in College Station to serve as the guest picker for ESPN’s College GameDay. It would have been quite the moment of celebration for one of the university’s most notorious players to be there for A&M’s first College Football Playoff appearance.
But he never showed up.
That Friday, the GameDay crew was teasing that the Aggie legend would be on their show. Then the next day, they made no mention of Manziel, and instead announced that former Texas A&M basketball star and current NBA player Alex Caruso would be the guest picker. So why wasn’t “Johnny Football” at College Gameday in College Station?
Social media sleuths quickly developed their own theory. As it turns out, Manziel attended the Jake Paul-Anthony Joshua fight in Miami, Florida, and let’s just say it didn’t look like he was sticking to water. The drinks – and potentially other things – were flowing, and Johnny Manziel provided all of that proof through his Instagram story:
So social media quickly jumped to the conclusion that Johnny Manziel partied too hard the night before his College GameDay appearance, and that’s why he ended up missing out.
However, that’s now how it went down according to Manziel’s camp. If you go with their story, the former football player contacted GameDay on Saturday morning and told them that he had contracted norovirus and would be unable to make the show, which is why they then they pivoted to Caruso.
Manziel rolled with that story, and released a statement apologizing for his absence and saying that it was out of his control:
“I will have plenty more to say about what transpired yesterday. There is almost nothing on this earth that would have made me miss that game. To all the people that genuinely reached out and checked in on me I cannot thank you enough. To ESPN, Pat, Coach, Desmond, and the entire crew on ‘GameDay,’ I apologize it was out of my control. To the Aggies and A&M fan base, I’m sorry.
I will continue to let everyone out there run with a fake narrative and at the end of the day perception always wins over reality. I love all of you who genuinely support me through the good and bad like you’ve all done for years. I have no doubt Texas A&M and the Aggie football program will be in that position again. I’m recovering and feeling about a 3/10. Going to rest up and try to get back to normal. Much love.”
Now, for those not familiar with norovirus, it’s basically a fancy word for stomach bug, and it comes with symptoms that include nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Funny enough, another virus called “hangover” has those same exact symptoms. Am I implying that Manziel didn’t get a stomach bug in the 8 hours between the fight he attended and GameDay? Maybe so. Let’s not forget this is the guy who was benched by the Cleveland Browns for partying during a bye week and flew to Vegas the night before what turned out to be the final game of his NFL career.
Since all of that went down, there’s been a lot of speculation that Manziel and ESPN weren’t in good graces. Even longtime College GameDay host Rece Davis took a shot at the former Aggies quarterback, saying that blaming his absence on a “bad breakfast” wasn’t all that believable.
But it’s good to see that Johnny Manziel continues to handle all of this with a lot of class. And by “class,” I actually mean that he’s now spun this whole ordeal into an advertisement for a prediction market. If you aren’t familiar with the new phenomenon, sites like Kalshi allow for people to bet on future events happening and/or not happening. It’s like sports betting meets the stock market.
Manziel apparently heard from Kalshi at some point in the past couple of weeks, and ended up putting this message out on the last day of 2025:
“There’s been plenty of speculation lately. I’m good with ESPN. I’m good with McAfee. If you want to keep guessing, you can do it now officially. Thanks to Kalshi, you can trade on whether I’ll be back on ‘College GameDay’ in 2026.
The market currently gives me a 34% change of being back on set next season. If you think that number is low, take the other side. To the Aggies fans – big things coming in 2026. I’m bullish on Texas A&M football and excited for what’s ahead. Happy New Year.”
What a weird way of spinning the whole situation, eh?
Maybe this was Manziel’s plan all along? Or maybe he’s just capitalizing on an opportunity? Either way, he’s living up to the “Money Manziel” nickname… there’s no way he’s giving Kalshi a free shoutout.
