Before Als’ Manziel, there was Johnny Rodgers
Buzz around Manziel’s arrival as Als QB evokes weekend with Ordinary Superstar
A dazzling Heisman Trophy winner with a bad-boy past and charisma to turn heads north of the border to play football for the Montreal Alouettes, where he’s instantly hailed as the face of the franchise.
If that narrative seems familiar, it is: when Johnny Manziel (a.k.a. Johnny Snowball now that he’s north of the border) was traded from Hamilton to the Alouettes, I thought back to the glory days of one Johnny Rodgers, the Ordinary Superstar who lit up this town in the early 1970s.
There are many parallels between Johnny Snowball and J.R. Superstar. They’re both named “Johnny.” They both won the Heisman Trophy as the most outstanding player in NCAA football. They both had a level of fame and charisma that went way beyond their performance on the field.
And they are both party animals who had well-publicized brushes with the law.
It was one of those brushes with the law that took me to San Diego in the summer of 1986 on my first big assignment for The Gazette. I was a copy editor on the sports desk at the time and Rodgers had just been arrested for pulling a gun on a cable-TV repairman who came to disconnect his cable.
Rodgers apparently wasn’t doing interviews about the incident, but managing editor Mel Morris thought Rodgers might talk to me because of the Nebraska connection: I had been an obscure high jumper on the Cornhusker track team at Nebraska, where Rodgers became the most electric player in college football.
Rodgers told me to come on out to San Diego and we would talk, so I went — and spent three days waiting at the hotel, trying to reach the man I had come to interview and imagining the reception at home if I returned without the story.
At last, Rodgers appeared and we were off on an escapade straight out of Hunter Thompson. For the next three days, he drove fast and talked faster, tearing around Southern California in his sports car with me as a nervous passenger. For Rodgers, 100 miles per hour was a sedate cruising speed. When he squealed around a corner on two wheels in front of a California Highway Patrol cruiser, I slid down in the seat with one eye on the rear-view mirror.
Rodgers laughed. “I can outrun those mother------- any day,” he said, “and they can’t shoot straight anyway!”
Not the most reassuring words, especially when we had been tearing around from one million-dollar home to another, with Rodgers dropping off a full briefcase here and picking up another there. Given his wild reputation in Montreal, I was sure the briefcases were filled with the contraband of your choice, but it turned out we were carrying nothing more risky than legal papers.
His explanation of the incident with the cable-TV man was classic Johnny: He had been playing poker all night and the game was still going in the morning when he saw a man in his backyard and took him for an intruder.
Rodgers grabbed a pistol, chased the man away and went back to his poker game. “Then I heard all these sirens,” he told me, “and the next thing I knew there were a dozen cop cars in front of my house. ‘Johnny,’ I said to myself, ‘them white mother------are going to slam-dunk your black ass!’”
There was a great deal more during those three wild days, including a muscular, tattooed Vietnam vet who answered the door in a French maid’s outfit complete with fishnet stockings and spiked heels — and not once did Rodgers bother to tell me where we were going or why.
I was left with the impression of a man who could have given charisma lessons to P.K. Subban. Unlike Subban, the things Rodgers did weren’t carefully calculated to enhance his brand: The Ordinary Superstar was spontaneous and real. He was what he was, take it or leave it, from the floor-length fur coat to the wild hats, the white Rolls-Royce, the dazzling kick returns.
Today, the Alouettes need Johnny Snowball to be another Ordinary Superstar. The team that has not had a quarterback since Anthony Calvillo went down in August of 2013 desperately needs someone who can both play the position and sell tickets.
Is Manziel the man? He is already the most famous (or infamous) player in the CFL and he has barely seen action. But Montreal is a city that likes its charisma hot, from Rocket Richard to Rodgers, from Guy Lafleur to Alex Kovalev, from Tim Raines to Subban. Manziel should be a perfect fit, assuming he can play.
As for the Ordinary Superstar, my Weekend with Johnny ended at the home of the great Chargers tight end Kellen Winslow, sipping drinks at poolside as the sun set over San Diego and watching Winslow’s cute, three-year-old son Kellen Jr. splash in the water.
More than 30 years on, Winslow Jr. is in a level of trouble that transcends anything Rodgers or Manziel have done in their worst moments.
Life takes strange twists. I’m sure Johnny Manziel, erstwhile bad boy of the NFL, never saw himself as the saviour of a football team in a French-Canadian city. But if he’s half the legend Johnny Rodgers was, it should be a helluva ride.