Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel has been enjoying spring break down in Cabo San Lucas this week, but he took a little break from the R&R to talk some smack to Twitter trolls.
The kerfuffle started when a photo of Manziel posing shirtless on the beach with some buddies surfaced online. An innocuous enough shot, until you take a closer look at the left side of Manziel's rib cage, which appears to sport a tattoo of the Texas Longhorns logo.
Manziel plays quarterback for Longhorn rival Texas A&M, so the apparent ink touched off a bit of a controversy. Fans online wondered whether it was, in fact, the real deal or just a mischievous bit of Photoshop. So Manziel took to Twitter on Monday afternoon to dispel the speculation with a tweet reading, "FAKE tattoo.."
Manziel is a bona-fide celebrity now, and has more than 320,000 Twitter followers. Anything he does on the microblogging network will attract some attention. Predictably, some folks on Twitter responded to his post antagonistically, and Manziel couldn't resist the bait:
@alexparmley_ you suck— Johnny Manziel (@JManziel2) March 13, 2013
@bamabane tell your mom I said wassup— Johnny Manziel (@JManziel2) March 13, 2013
@babyfacebrutha you know nothing about me homie...hop off— Johnny Manziel (@JManziel2) March 13, 2013
No doubt Manziel gets plenty of negative tweets, but while the temptation to respond must be strong, he should leave the "You sucks" and "Yo mommas" out of it. The guy's barely out of his teens, has just became the first freshman to ever win the Heisman and is still auditioning for what will hopefully be a long and lucrative pro career. Understandable as it is to some degree, stooping to the level of bitter fans while vacationing in Cabo isn't a good look for someone in his position.
Now, if Manziel was a grown-up pro boxer teaching trolls a lesson by hunting one down for a face-to-face talk? That'd be a different story.
Were Manziel's responses fair, or should he have taken the high road? Give us your take in the comments.