Johnny Manziel details relationship with Kevin Sumlin: 'Calling a spade a spade'

Former Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel was close with former Texas A&M head coach Kevin Sumlin at one point. However, that is no longer the case.

Manziel recently sat down with Shannon Sharpe and discussed why he is not as close with Sumlin as he used to be.

“I think where our relationship fell out a little bit is, how do you have a guy, who’s a grown man, telling me what I should do? Obviously my guy, my coach that I’m looking up to, my head football coach, is telling me to live a certain way and put all this partying and all of this behind you. But if you know anything about Kevin Sumlin, that’s what he’s doing behind the scenes,” Johnny Manziel said.

“We’re at the 40-40 club in New York. We’re in the back room, playing pool with Ace of Spades, chilling. Coach is there, this is what he does. So now looking back at it, it’s hypocritical to me.”

Manziel is still appreciative of everything Sumlin did for him, but they no longer talk regularly the way they once did.

“My relationship with Kevin Sumlin was great. He was my dog. He rode for me hard. He went to bat for me. He went to war for me, in a multitude of different scenarios,” Manziel said.

“Our relationship is great and will forever be great, and I do not sit here today as a judge of a person who helped me get to the point where I wanted to be in life, by no means whatsoever. I’m calling a spade a spade. And I’m just going to give the God’s honest truth of what I know it to be. If that ruffles some feathers, so be it. That’s the way the world goes.”

Johnny Manziel spent three seasons at Texas A&M, playing under Sumlin for the last two. He put up incredible stats at A&M, with Sumlin leading the program.

Sumlin spent six seasons as the head coach at Texas A&M, failing to win more than eight games in each of his final four years. He then went to Arizona and was fired in 2020 with the Wildcats struggling. He is currently the associate head coach at Maryland.

Manziel isn’t surprised that Sumlin hasn’t received another head coaching opportunity since Arizona.

“I think what made coach Sumlin so great is no longer really with him right now where his focus is. I think life has gotten the better of him a little bit. And I’m a prime example of I don’t want to sit up here and be a preacher. I don’t want to sit up here and tell anybody they’re living wrong or anything like that, because that’s what it used to feel like with me back in the day when people were doing that to me,” Manziel said.

“I don’t see the same spark. I don’t have much of a relationship with him anymore. We’ll reach out and talk maybe once a year, but not like I have a relationship with my other coaches.”