Johnny Manziel Reveals What He Could Have Made in NIL

Texas A&M's Heisman quarterback dishes on under-the-table deal his dad tried to land him with Aggies

What if Johnny Manziel had been able to capitalize on Name, Image and Likeness while he was playing football at Texas A&M? He may have let everyone in on what he could have made had he played longer for the Aggies.

During an appearance on Club Shay Shay, a podcast hosted by NFL Hall of Famer Shannon Sharpe, Manziel revealed that his father tried to secure his son a $3 million deal to remain at Texas A&M.

Yep, that’s right — $3 million to stay with the Aggies, well before NIL was commonplace.

But here’s the catch — Manziel never knew about the deal, at least while his father was trying to secure it. He only learned of it several years after he left A&M after his 2013 season to head for the NFL.

Back then, for a quarterback with Manziel’s value in the draft, that was the right decision. But would his mind have changed had Manziel’s father been successful?

“My dad went and had a meeting with (then Aggies coach) Kevin Sumlin,” Manziel said. “And pretty much went to him man to man and was like, ‘We’ll take $3 million and we’ll stay for the next two years.’ And my dad says this is as true today as he did when he told me.”

Manziel won the 2012 Heisman Trophy as a redshirt freshman and had another exceptional season in 2013. By college football standards, his value was never higher. Had NIL been in existence back then, Manziel might well have made that amount through partnerships with national brands and Aggie-based collectives.

Manziel said he could have made $5 million if he had access to NIL.

Back then, he told Sharpe, that was how it worked and he referenced other programs that he says had “bag men.”

“It’s the way the business worked back then,” he said. “There was a bag man. There was a bag man at LSU. There was a bag man at ‘Bama. There was a bag man at every school around the country if you were competing for a national title. It is what it was, and it was always that way until we’re into the NIL portion of everything now, the way it should be.”