In April, Texas A&M coach Kevin Sumlin refused to name a starting quarterback at the end of spring practice, preferring to extend auditions through the summer and into preseason practice. Friday morning, his decision may have been made a little easier by redshirt freshman Johnny Manziel, who was arrested and charged with three misdemeanors following an early morning fight.
Manziel, a 19-year-old from Kerrville, Texas, was arrested at 3:24 a.m. when an officer on bike patrol came across a group of people surrounding Manziel and another man throwing punches in an intersection just off campus. The officer broke up the fight and asked Manziel for his ID, which listed Manziel as 21 years old. Skeptical, the officer questioned Manziel about his birthday; after several mixups over the year he was supposedly born, police found two other driver's licenses in Manziel's wallet, one fake and one real.
Manziel was booked in the Brazos County Jail on charges of disorderly conduct by fighting, a Class C misdemeanor, as well as failure to identify and possessing a fake driver's license. He remained in the jail on Friday morning on $6,435 bond. No word on the status of his shirt.
Manziel, is generally considered the best athlete among the four Aggie quarterbacks vying to replace outgoing starter Ryan Tannehill at the top of the depth chart, and was still nominally in the race for the job coming out of the spring, despite the emergence of sophomore Jameill Showers as the clear frontrunner. With the veteran talent surrounding him at tailback (senior Christine Michael), wide receiver (seniors Ryan Swope and Uzoma Nwachukwu) and on the offensive line (future first-rounders Luke Joeckel and Jake Matthews), there's no reason that whoever fills the position can't put the torch to A&M record books in Sumlin's up-tempo, quarterback-friendly spread passing attack. But whatever shot Manziel still had before today, it just got much, much longer.
