Johnny Manziel will be back

Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel will reportedly soon be "Johnny Football" once again in a new startup league.

Manziel, 28, told ESPN he's agreed to join Fan Controlled Football, which is scheduled to begin play in February. The new league will reportedly have 7-on-7 games in which fans set rosters, call plays and interact in varying other ways.

"The more I heard about what this was going to be, the more I felt it was going to be something that was just very fun," Manziel said. "It's going to be very fan-oriented and something I could get behind without being extremely, extremely, extremely serious, the way that my football career has been in the past."

The former first-round draft pick said he connected with FCF co-founder and CEO Sohrob Farudi through a mutual friend, comedian Bob Menery, to discuss joining the league. Manziel hasn't played football since 2019, when he appeared in the now-defunct Alliance of American Football league for the Memphis Express.

The former Texas A&M standout had previously appeared in the Canadian Football League as a member of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Montreal Aloutettes, as well as The Spring League, following a disappointing NFL tenure that only lasted two seasons.

Manziel was selected No. 22 overall by the Cleveland Browns in the 2014 NFL Draft after a decorated collegiate career. However, multiple off-field incidents coincided with lackluster play and the Browns released the quarterback in 2016.

Manziel had previously told TMZ in September that he was retired from playing football, but wouldn't completely rule out his options when asked if he planned on joining the XFL after it was purchased by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and a team of business partners.

"I think football is a little bit behind me…Football for me is not at the forefront of my mind," Manziel said. "Listen, anything ‘The Rock’ touches is gonna be gold as always."

FCF will begin with four teams, each of which currently have celebrity owners including current NFL stars Richard Sherman, Austin Ekeler and retired legend Marshawn Lynch, as well as Migos rapper Quavo and boxing legend Mike Tyson.

2020 University of Hawaii Football

12/24/20 - Hawaii defeats Houston 28-14 in New Mexico Bowl held in Texas

12/18/20 - Aloha Stadium moratorium impacts Rainbow Warrior football

12/16/20 - Muasau named All-Mountain West

12/16/20 - Miles Reed enters transfer portal

12/13/20 - Hawaii accepts invitation to play in New Mexico Bowl against Houston

12/12/20 - Hawaii runs over Nevada 38-21 to finish 4-4

12/5/20 - Hawaii falls to San Jose State 24-35

12/2/20 - San Jose State game moved to Aloha Stadium

11/28/20 - Hawaii stops Nevada 24-21

11/21/20 - Hawaii comeback falls short against Boise State 32-40

11/14/20 - Hawaii falls to San Diego State 34-10

11/7/20 - Hawaii scrambles back to beat New Mexico 39-33

10/30/20 - Hawaii run over by Wyoming, 31-7

10/24/20 - Hawaii broke the rock in defeating Fresno State 34-19 in Graham's debut

10/22/20 - Calvin Turner faced uncertainty

10/18/20 - Hawaii will play in empty Aloha Stadium (I mean actually empty)

10/18/20 - Todd Graham's salary ranks 10th out of 12 MWC teams

10/18/20 - Kim McCloud joins Hawaii staff

10/17/20 - Hawaii PPV will be $69.99 per game (no discount for the whole season?)

10/15/20 - Kody Cooke wants to be able to take people into the fifth quarter

10/13/20 - Only two Hawaii games to be nationally televised

9/30/20 - Four players test positive, team activities suspended

9/30/20 - Todd Graham says Chevan Cordeiro is our quarterback

9/25/20 - Mountain West approves season starting October 24

8/10/20 - Mountain West cancels fall football season
8/6/20 - University of Hawaii's current schedule has 10 games starting on September 26
7/23/20 - Hawaii picked to finished third in the West Division
7/19/20 - Rico Bussey picked as Mountain West newcomer of the year
7/13/20 - Robert Morris replaces Fordham on Hawaii's schedule
7/10/20 - U.H.'s three games with Pac-12 opponents are cancelled
6/28/20 - Kody Cooke is involved in everything
6/25/20 - Trent Figg has a plan
6/23/20 - Hawaii game with Fordham in jeopardy
6/21/20 - Why was Brennan Marion called 50-50?
6/19/20 - Todd Graham looking forward to training camp
6/19/20 - Abraham Elimimian sets the tone
6/18/20 - Sam Bennett has seen all the angles
6/14/20 - Laiu Moeakiola is trying to keep pace
6/12/20 - Tony Hull likes to figure how things work
6/11/20 - G.J. Kinne's move to Hawaii was a no-brainer
6/10/20 - Victor Santa Cruz and the war dogs
6/9/20 - Dan Phillips skill is the grill
6/8/20 - Bo Graham will be the eye in the sky
5/31/20 - Rico Bussey Jr., WR, transferring from North Texas
5/31/20 - Preliminary depth chart taking shape
4/20/20 - Armani Edden, QB, College of the Canyons, commits to Hawaii
4/15/20 - Adam Stack (Kamehameha 2017), K, to transfer from Oregon to Hawaii
4/2/20 - Zelly Henderson, WR, verbally commits to Hawaii
3/16/20 - Hawaii lands Jake Farrell, QB from Arizona
2/6/20 - Hawaii gets seven on signing day: Zion Bowens WR, Quin Bright WR, Cameron Lockridge CB, Sergio Muasau C, Jalen Perdue CB, Logan Taylor S, Riley Wilson WR
2/5/20 - Hawaii signs two receivers: Zion Bowens of Long Beach City College and Riley Wilson of Prestonwood Christian in Plano Texas
1/29/20 - Cameron Lockridge, DB, Reedley (CA) College and Logan Taylor, DB, El Camino College commit to Hawaii
1/5/20 - Isaiah Mays, DB, City College of San Francisco accepts scholarship offer
12/19/19 - Hawaii signs 10: Ezra Evaimalo DE, Kilohana Haasenritter SB, Dae Dae Hunter RB, Tamatoa Mokiao-Atimalala SB, Sterlin Ortiz S, Matt Shipley K, Kemon Smith DT, Micah Soliai Howlett OL, Maurice Ta'ala DT, Calvin Turner WR
12/18/19 - Dae Dae Hunter, RB, Chandler (Ariz) accepts scholarship offer
10/3/19 - Maurice Ta'ala to join brother at Hawaii
9/10/19 - Micah Soliai Howlett, OL, Kahuku, pledges to join Hawaii in 2020
8/22/19 - Isaiah Tufaga to transfer from Oregon State
6/30/19 - Matthew Shipley, K, Liberty Hill High, Texas to sign with Hawaii
6/18/19 - Kilohana Haasenritter, WR, Hilo High, accepts offer from Hawaii
6/10/19 - Jake Tuatagaloa, OL, Mililani, commits to Hawaii
5/9/19 - Ezra Evaimalo, DE, Kamehameha, orally commits to Hawaii for 2020
1/24/19 - Tamatoa Mokiao-Atimalala, DB/WR, Campbell commits to Hawaii

MLB reclassifies the Negro Leagues as major league

NEW YORK >> Willie Mays will add some hits to his record, Monte Irvin’s big league batting average should climb over .300 and Satchel Paige may add nearly 150 victories to his total.

Josh Gibson, the greatest of all Negro League sluggers, might just wind up with a major league record, too.

The statistics and records of greats like Gibson, Paige and roughly 3,400 other players are set to join Major League Baseball’s books after MLB announced today it is reclassifying the Negro Leagues as a major league.

MLB said today it was “correcting a longtime oversight in the game’s history” by elevating the Negro Leagues on the centennial of its founding. The Negro Leagues consisted of seven leagues, and MLB will include records from those circuits between 1920-48. The Negro Leagues began to dissolve one year after Jackie Robinson became MLB’s first Black player with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

Those leagues were excluded in 1969 when the Special Committee on Baseball Records identified six official “major leagues” dating to 1876.

“It is MLB’s view that the Committee’s 1969 omission of the Negro Leagues from consideration was clearly an error that demands today’s designation,” the league said in a statement.

The league will work with the Elias Sports Bureau to review Negro Leagues statistics and records and figure out how to incorporate them into MLB’s history. There was no standard method of record keeping for the Negro Leagues, but there are enough box scores to stich together some of its statistical past.

For instance, Mays could be credited with 16 hits from his 1948 season with the Alabama Black Barons. Irvin, a teammate of Mays’ with the New York Giants, could see his career average climb from .293 to .304 if numbers listed at Baseball-Reference from his nine Negro League seasons are accurate. And Paige, who currently is credited with 28 major league wins, should add at least 146 to his total.

While some have estimated Gibson slugged over 800 homers during 16 Negro League seasons, it’s unlikely that enough records exist for him to officially pass Barry Bonds for the career record at 762.

Depending on what Elias and MLB rule, though, Gibson could wind up with another notable record. His .441 batting average in 1943 would be the best season mark ever, edging Hugh Duffy’s .440 from 1894. Gibson’s line came in fewer than 80 games, however, far short of the modern standard of 162.

“The perceived deficiencies of the Negro Leagues’ structure and scheduling were born of MLB’s exclusionary practices, and denying them major league status has been a double penalty, much like that exacted of Hall of Fame candidates prior to Satchel Paige’s induction in 1971,” baseball historian John Thorn said. “Granting MLB status to the Negro Leagues a century after their founding is profoundly gratifying.”

MLB said it considered input from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, the Negro League Researchers and Authors Group and studies by other baseball authors and researchers.

“All of us who love baseball have long known that the Negro Leagues produced many of our game’s best players, innovations and triumphs against a backdrop of injustice,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “We are now grateful to count the players of the Negro Leagues where they belong: as Major Leaguers within the official historical record.”

2021 University of Hawaii football commitments

12/17/20 - Hawaii adds seven signees: Joshu Bartholotte LB, Colby Burton DB, Jordan Johnson RB, Tariq Jones DL, Solomon Turner LB (Baylor), Sonny Semeatu LB (Mililani), Kolby Wyatt TE (Georgia)

8/26/20 - Tariq Jones, pass rusher, McDonogh 35 Senior High School (New Orleans) commits
8/6/20 - Josh Bertholotte, LB, Landry High (New Orleans) commits
7/21/20 - Tyriek Bell, LB, Saddleback Community College (Mission Viejo, CA) chooses Hawaii
7/19/20 - Brayden Schager, QB, Highland Park High (Dallas TX) accepts scholarship
7/14/20 - Jordan Johnson, RB, Allen (TX) commits
6/23/20 - Sonny Semeatu, LB, Mililani commits
6/14/20 - Peter Manuma, U, Campbell commits
5/15/20 - Cinque Williams, DB (TX) commits
4/7/20 - DQ James, RB, Lancaster High (TX)

Bill Duffy pays back Anthony Carter

Everybody makes mistakes. Not everybody makes a $3 million mistake. And very few people have volunteered to fix such a big mistake after making it.

That’s what Bill Duffy did. In 2003, he was a sports agent representing Anthony Carter, a journeyman N.B.A. player on the Miami Heat. Carter’s contract allowed him to opt into a $4.1 million contract for the next season, much more than he could have made as a free agent. Unfortunately, Duffy failed to submit the paperwork in time, and Carter lost more than $3 million as a result.

In response, Duffy promised to reimburse Carter for the lost money. As The Times’s Sopan Deb wrote, “It was an unusual and virtually unprecedented move.”

“I wasn’t even mad, to tell you the truth,” Carter, who’s now back with the Heat as an assistant coach, said. “I didn’t say, ‘What happened?’ Because I knew what type of person he was. Things happen.”

Duffy has just finished making the payments to Carter, and Sopan has told the full story — including how the mistake helped the Heat win a championship.

***

By Sopan Deb

Dec. 14, 2020

Anthony Carter is one of the most consequential figures in Miami Heat history. And it was all because of a mistake.

Sure, any Knicks fan will tell you that Carter came out of nowhere to beat their team at the buzzer in Game 3 of the 2000 Eastern Conference semifinals. But Carter was never a star. Far from it: He spent the first four seasons of his 13-year N.B.A. career as a reserve for the Heat, averaging between 4.1 and 6.3 points a game.

And as great as the Knicks shot was, it was something that happened years afterward that forever enshrined Carter in Heat lore.

After the 2002-03 season, Carter, then 27, was planning to exercise a $4.1 million player option to remain in Miami. Picking up the option was a no-brainer. Carter was coming off a disappointing season in which he averaged 4.1 points on .356 shooting in 49 games. For a player with that stat line, $4.1 million was a fortune.

Except Carter’s agent, Bill Duffy, failed to notify the Heat by the June 30 deadline that Carter was coming back. Instead of locking in another season in Miami, Carter accidentally became a free agent.

The mistake cost him at least $3 million. Carter had to settle for a minimum contract with the San Antonio Spurs — roughly $750,000 — the next season, rather than the $4.1 million he would have locked in by exercising his option.

As criticism rained down on Duffy, the agent offered to make it right. He would pay Carter $3 million out of his own pocket — through an agreed-upon payment schedule — to make up for the mistake, essentially the difference between his Spurs contract and the Heat salary he had forfeited. It was an unusual and virtually unprecedented move.

This year marked the last of those payments, with Carter confirming in an interview this week that Duffy made good on his promise.

That was hardly a surprise for Carter, who said he never considered firing Duffy in the wake of the incident.

‘I wasn’t even mad, to tell you the truth. I didn’t think anything of it until lawyers and stuff called. I didn’t jump to any conclusions.’

ANTHONY CARTER, WHO COACHED IN THE N.B.A.'S DEVELOPMENT LEAGUE BEFORE JOINING THE HEAT AS AN ASSISTANT, ON HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH HIS AGENT.

“I wasn’t even mad, to tell you the truth,” said Carter, who is now back with the Heat as an assistant coach. “I didn’t think anything of it until lawyers and stuff called. I didn’t jump to any conclusions. I didn’t say, ‘What happened?’ Because I knew what type of person he was. Things happen.”

It was a blunder that had cascading effects.

The most noteworthy ripple was that it gave Pat Riley, the Heat’s president, an unexpected amount of cap space that summer, which he used to sign Lamar Odom as a free agent. One year later, in 2004, Odom was the centerpiece of a trade with the Los Angeles Lakers for Shaquille O’Neal.

Two years after acquiring O’Neal, Miami won its first N.B.A. championship. It was Duffy’s clerical error that, at least in part, allowed the championship to happen. That turned Carter’s contract situation with the Heat into one of the all-time “What Ifs?” in league history.

“I should’ve got one of them rings, too,” Carter, 45, joked.

Riley declined to comment for this article.

While Carter’s loyalty to Duffy may seem baffling to some, it was a result of Duffy’s previous faith in Carter.

Carter’s making it to the N.B.A. at all was a long shot. He dropped out of Alonzo A. Crim High School in Atlanta after his freshman year. He spent the next three years traveling around the city and playing basketball games for money to make a living. At one of those games in 1994, an opponent offered to send a tape highlighting Carter’s game to the coach at Saddleback College, a junior college in California. With some help of friends and family, Carter got his high school equivalency diploma and headed west. Two years later, he transferred to the University of Hawaii, a Division I program.

In 1998, months after he injured his left shoulder before his senior year at Hawaii, Carter damaged it more seriously on the first day of a camp ahead of the N.B.A. draft. The injury required surgery and other agents stopped pursuing him, assuming that his N.B.A. hopes were dead. All of them, that is, except for Duffy, who stuck with Carter and arranged for him to sign with the Heat after he went undrafted. He spent four years with the team.

Duffy’s mistake could have been as damaging to his future as it was to Carter’s. But in promising to pay back Carter, his loyalty instead became a selling point for his services.

“When this happened, I was hearing from a lot of people because I took responsibility,” Duffy said. “I took ownership of it and took care of it and he was taken care of.

“I’ve had Wall Street people call me and say: ‘Man, that happens all the time. Everybody tries to hide from it. They try to pass the buck. You stood up for it. You took care of it.’ I actually gained a lot of respect from people.”

‘When this happened, I was hearing from a lot of people because I took responsibility. I took ownership of it and took care of it.’

BILL DUFFY, AN AGENT WHOSE CLIENT LIST NOW INCLUDES LUKA DONCIC AND RAJON RONDO.

At the time, it took days for the news of the filing error to reach Carter. Duffy, who declined to go into the specifics of how the oversight occurred, first learned about it from the team. Llew Haden, Carter’s close friend and financial adviser, said he heard about it on July 4, when a reporter called looking for a comment.

“I know my emotion wasn’t anger,” Haden said. “First, I was just astounded. ‘How in the hell could something like this happen?’ And then it was, ‘What are we going to do next?’”

N.B.A. agents are known to be hypercompetitive. Yet both Carter and Haden said they did not receive any calls from Duffy’s competitors. Instead, Haden theorized, they may have been celebrating a rival’s apparent professional downfall.

“I think most of them were just dancing up and down in the halls,” Haden said. “They were going to be able to get clients who would be tempted to go with them.”

In fact, from the day they received the news, the only calls that Carter and Haden received were from lawyers offering to represent Carter pro bono to sue Duffy — offers they never seriously considered.

Duffy flew to Atlanta that week to meet with Carter and Haden and work out their financial arrangement: a series of payments — a sort of annuity lasting until 2020 — that would make Carter whole.

“He was there for me from Day 1,” Carter said. “I just knew I was going to stick with him regardless, and to this day, we have a close friendship.”

Duffy’s business survived the mistake, too. Today, he has a stable roster of N.B.A. clients, including Luka Doncic, Rajon Rondo and Goran Dragic.

After leaving the Heat, Carter stayed in the league for nine more seasons. He developed a reputation as a hard worker and was a key player on the 2008-2009 Denver Nuggets, who went to the Western Conference finals. According to Basketball Reference, Carter’s N.B.A. earnings — not including the $3 million restitution from Duffy — are estimated at $17 million, less than what many current players now collect in a single season.

Carter and Duffy have maintained an enduring relationship. Duffy has given Carter guidance on his children, including his son Devin, who is a high school basketball player currently committed to the University of South Carolina. Duffy also still looks over Carter’s contracts.

Carter says he has never brought up the filing error with Duffy, not even to joke about it. Nor has he joked about it with Riley since returning to the organization as a coach in 2016. But he says he is at peace with how things worked out.

“I got my name in the history books in two different ways,” Carter said, referring to his buzzer-beater and the contract-that-wasn’t. “I wouldn’t change anything.”

Carter is known for two things: the clerical error that cost him more than $3 million, and this buzzer-beater against the Knicks in 2000.Credit...Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images

***

The Miami Herald story by Anthony Chiang

2021 NCAA Football

 12/13/20 - McKenzie Milton to transfer to Florida State