A spasm of decency

 Well, isn't THIS just the cat's PJs. As if the NCAA doesn't have enough on its plate these days, now it's got Johnny Football on its case.

Yes, Johnny Football, aka Johnny Manziel, brief college football legend turned epic screwup. Washed out in the NFL. Briefly played in the CFL. Accused of beating up his girlfriend. Perpetrator of multiple shenanigans, including gaming the system in college in a way that wouldn't be gaming the system now, but was then.

Last seen playing in some weird league where the fans call the plays. Or something like that.

But the world is a strange old place, which means that sometimes even epic screwups are stricken with spasms of decency. And so the other day Manziel, the 2012 Heisman Trophy winner, announced he would be boycotting the annual Heisman ceremony until the NCAA returned Reggie Bush's Heisman.

"Like they'll miss him?" you're saying now, snidely. 

Please. Be nice.

See, Bush won the gnarled little stiff-arming guy in 2005, but the NCAA made him give it back after it came out that Bush's family accepted cash, travel expenses and a house from agents hoping to sign the USC star. 

Bush was also ordered to disassociate himself from his alma mater for 10 years.

This didn't seem quite so excessive then as it does now, the passage of time providing perspective as it tends to do. Now it all just seems petty, especially given that Bush was punished for stuff his family did, and which the NCAA would no longer consider heinous in the new frontier of NIL deals.  

Also, Bush has served his time, his exile from USC having expired four years ago.

Also-also, he was demonstrably the best player in college football in 2005, and richly deserved the trophy that went with it.

But the NCAA apparently considers this a life sentence. Yet another wrongheaded judgment from an organization that's busily piling up an Everest of them these days.

So says Johnny Football, anyway.

"After careful thought and consideration I will be humbly removing myself from the Heisman Trophy ceremony until Reggie Bush gets his trophy back," his statement read. "Doesn't sit right with my morals and values that he can't be on that stage with us every year."

And, yes, I know, this is the part where you say, "Johnny Manziel has morals and values? Who knew?"

I get that. Even chuckled a bit myself when I read it.

But then I had a second thought: If for little else, maybe Manziel should get some credit for standing by one of the other members of the Heisman club. Because even screwups can behave honorably sometimes, hard as that is to believe.

And speaking of screwups, now it's the NCAA's turn to do the honorable thing. And maybe it will eventually.

Hard as that is to believe.