The Cautionary Tale of Johnny Manziel

I don’t like to admit it often, but I am a lifelong Browns fan.  My grandfather lived in Cleveland and we’d go to games as a family, back when they had Bernie Kosar and a fighting chance.  Since, we’ve dealt with the team moving to Baltimore, restarting as an expansion team, only one playoff appearance in 16 years, and about 2,000 different quarterbacks.  But, my love for the team is cemented and it’s not going anywhere.  At the very least, I am a role model to my sons on how to be resilient, loyal, and have a sense of humor.

My fandom was challenged a bit when the team selected Johnny Manziel in the draft 3 years ago.  I wasn’t sure what we were getting with the young Aggie, but I soon learned to like the guy.  He was brash and cocky, but the Browns had a shortage of that. Because everyone else hated him, it became a badge of honor to want to see the guy succeed.  And until a few months ago, that badge of honor remained on my chest.

And now, we’re days away from the Browns cutting Johnny Manziel and ending his tenure in Cleveland.  And maybe in the NFL entirely.  Johnny has had a plethora of issues off the field, including alleged domestic abuse, alcohol problems, and lying to his coaches about his hedonistic lifestyle.  The Browns are done with him, which is hard to take because there was a glimmer of hope with him early in the last season.
  
Some other team may take a chance and who knows, he might finally figure out how to succeed.  But for now, his existence is best used as a cautionary tale to all of us and especially you – college fraternity and sorority members.

You see, one of the reasons it became easy to root for Johnny was that he could actually play football, which makes him different from most other "busts."  He has talent and is fun to watch on the field.  That talent could have become enough to propel him to become the quarterback the Browns have been desperately seeking for two decades, which in turn, would have made him possibly the most legendary figure in Cleveland sports.  With apologies to Jim Brown and Lebron James, the QB that leads the Browns to their first Super Bowl win will become undisputedly the lifelong mayor of Cleveland.

But it won’t be Johnny after all.  And the reason why is his sad inability to embrace the opportunities in front of him.  Aided, of course, by his apparent addictions to alcohol and a lifestyle that the modern NFL player cannot lead.

Johnny’s time at Texas A&M, and his Heisman trophy-winning success there, is like your time in high school.  He dominated his environment with relative ease, and thus, didn’t need to put forth the effort to truly embrace what he was a part of.  Going to the NFL was like you arriving to your college campus:  a new environment filled with wondrous opportunities for personal growth and achievement, but only unlocked by effort and attitude.  The laissez-fare approach you might have been able to use in high school yields a very mediocre college experience.

There are Manziels in your chapter.  Maybe lots of them. Those are the men or women who signed on to the fraternity experience, but decided not to use it for all it can provide.  Perhaps they use it only for a social outlet or a chance for a party lifestyle, similar to how Johnny Manziel used the fame that comes with being in the NFL. 

Sites like Total Frat Move want your chapter to be full of Manziels.  For them, that’s the pinnacle of the fraternity experience. 

Choosing to be in a fraternity or sorority is akin to choosing be play in the NFL (an easier choice for sure since your 40-yard dash time doesn’t matter).  Those who succeed in the NFL then make the extra choice to fully embrace the opportunity they have.  They recognize that their time is limited. Better to spend their days in the full flow of the NFL experience knowing that it can’t last forever.

The same is true for fraternity and sorority.  As an undergraduate you probably have 3-4 years in the college fraternity experience.  That is the blink of any eye.  Will you arrive to this experience feeling entitled – like the experience ought to come to you?  Or, will you go and grab it.  Think forward to your graduation day.  How will you feel if you treated your undergraduate fraternity years as Johnny Manziel treated his NFL career?  Contrast that with how you’d feel if you were like Peyton Manning or Drew Brees instead?

Within almost every fraternity house are numerous composites of previous classes of members.  Within each composite are faces of members who did so much that their names are recognizable years later.  Like the names in the NFL hall of fame.  In that same frame are faces of members that would lead even their peers at the time to say “who’s that guy?”  And sure, there are a few that will be remembered for negative reasons, or easily mocked because of how poorly they treated their fraternity opportunity. That’s Ryan Leaf. And soon to be, Johnny Manziel. How will you be remembered?

There is no formula or easy how-to guide for how to embrace the fraternity experience.  I have lots of ideas (see the 150+ posts on this site).  But none of those ideas matter if it doesn’t start with your attitude – and the choice you make.  Seize it, or waste it.

Johnny’s story also provide caution for how alcohol and drugs can destroy any experience.  Johnny has been to rehab once already and I will always root for him to get better.  That is stuff never to take lightly, and too many of our brothers and sisters do.  We have a conventional attitude that college is a time to party and drink, and I certainly did those things as well.  But, just as teammates of Johnny’s saw the signs of excess, we need to be seeing them in our brothers and sisters as well. It’s a sacred responsibility to care for each other.

It’s a running theme of this blog that the biggest challenge the fraternity movement faces is how little our own members understand its power.  Imagine if 10% more of your chapter fully embraced the experience in front of them.  Now imagine 20%, 30%, and more.  What would your fraternity be like? If more of our members nationwide decided that these few years as an undergraduate are ones to be seized and taken full advantage of, I expect our movement will finally start to achieve its potential.

But for now, we’re still waiting. Waiting to finally get it right. Waiting like the Cleveland Browns.



 

Fraternity Bacon...or...What Causes Cancer in Greek Life?

Thanks World Health Organization for taking the fun out of bacon.  Now, every time I bite into my BLT, I’m going to hear the sounds of tumors forming instantly inside my body. 

Bacon can cause cancer, according to the WHO.  And they’ve added it to their long list of carcinogens – a list meant to make us paranoid about doing anything other than sitting in a padded bunker eating pieces of lettuce.

But hey – good news!  Fraternity is not on the list!  Yet.

While this is a no-fun list by the WHO, it is actually quite helpful.  The list isn’t saying that these things will always cause cancer, but could.  Pickled vegetables, leather dust, and coffee are also on the list.  So, if you’re trying to preserve your body for a long life, the list is a helpful guide of things to avoid or take in moderation.

Although when it comes to leather dust, go big or go home I say.

Greek life needs a list like this.  Maybe this could be the next project of AFA or AFLV or NIC 2.0:  create an annual listing of things that cause cancer in the fraternity movement.  It could be a list that is added to or subtracted from based on new data that’s acquired.

This list would be a guide for fraternities and sororities that want a sustainable future, as well as a guide for professionals who work with Greek life to detect warning signs of impending doom

Now – you and I could probably create this list based on conventional wisdom about what ails the fraternity/sorority movement.  Such a list might look like this:

Fraternity/Sorority Carcinogens
1. Hazing
2. Passive recruitment
3. Parties with alcohol
4. Theme parties that degrade women or minorities
5. Chapter houses

But instead of guessing or relying on conventional wisdom, it’s time for some individual or organization to lead a meaningful research effort into what inspires fraternity excellence or diminishes it. 

Something only ends up on the WHO list if science has proven it deserves to be there.  It’s time we got scientific about the fundamental causes of poor health in Greek life.

PhD and Masters students – here is a chance for you to do essential research that can make a real difference .  Here are three research questions, that together or separate, could help make a data-driven list of behaviors that jeopardize fraternity/sorority sustainability and that could inform our future practices:

1. What are the most common detectable predictors (warning signs) for a fraternity/sorority that will have its charter revoked within the next 12-24 months?  (study chapters that had their charter revoked and look for themes that were present 1-2 years earlier)
2. What are the common denominators for all fraternity/sorority chapters that have been suspended or closed due to a tragic event in the past ten years? (perhaps compare those with the habits in common of chapters that have won their national fraternity’s top award in the last ten years)
3. What are the common themes in the experience of fraternity/sorority chapters that are closed or reorganized within five years of being chartered?

The research from these three studies could provide the data needed to finally understand what causes a Greek organizations to fade, decline, or disintegrate altogether.  Armed with this knowledge, we can see warning signs before they become horrid front-page stories.  And, we can make smarter choices within the fraternity experience. 

Maybe we'll still eat bacon every once in a while - but we'll understand it can't be the biggest part of our diet.

With over 200 years of history, the fraternal movement ought to know what it's greatest carcinogens are.  We ought to have definitive answers on the things that give our organizations "cancer."  It doesn't mean we'll always listen - but not knowing can no longer be an excuse.




 

The Wicked Fraternity

I had the pleasure recently of attending a performance of the musical Wicked in my hometown of Indianapolis. If you aren’t familiar with the story, Wicked is essentially a retelling of the Wizard of Oz through the eyes of the Wicked Witch of West. She was the villain in the classic movie, and like most villains, we saw her only as the purely evil antagonist to the sweet and heroic Dorothy. Wicked challenges these notions and offers a different view – that of a misunderstood woman, born with green skin, ridiculed for that and for her magical abilities. We see that her evil is really an activism against a corrupt Wizard of Oz and his plans to create a more conformist and passive citizenry. Basically, the musical reminds us that assumptions are a dangerous thing – and that there is often a hidden story behind those we deem to be wicked.

So what does this have to do with fraternity? I see three direct applications:

1. We need to be cautious about the labels that we give to fraternity or sorority chapters. This is a common practice among professionals and advisors. It’s not unusual in conversations for chapters to be called good, bad, effective, dysfunctional, well-behaved, lawless, strong, or weak. To be fair, it’s typically the chapters’ behavior that yields these labels. However, labels are difficult to shake. They may in fact become self-fulfilling prophecies. How many times can a chapter hear that they are weak before they give up? If we’re already defined as a “bad” chapter, then we might as well break the rules. When we see how the witch in Wicked was treated from the time of her birth, then her story as an outcast becomes predictable.

2. Another lesson is the notion of an unknown back-story. There are indeed fraternity and sorority chapters that engage in destructive behaviors and who often deserve the moniker of “wicked.” But what led them to that place? What pivotal moments, when strung together, brought about their dysfunction? Worse yet, which of those moments might we, as staff and advisors, be responsible for? What could we have done at the very beginning, or at the critical tipping points, to change the destinies of these groups? What did we do as undergrads that charted an improper course for these students? Perhaps we should consider these questions before bantering about our frustrations with these chapters.

3. A final lesson is to reconsider what we deem to be wicked. Fairly or unfairly, those in power often get to make that determination. In Wicked, we can see that the witch’s intentions are just, but she is acting counter to the conventional path. Thus, she’s a disruptor, and defined as evil. I think it’s normal for us, as advisors and professional staff, to get so bogged down with the volume and difficulty of our work, that treat disruptors in a negative way. Chapters that don’t get it, or don’t follow our prescribed path for them, are seen as annoying outliers. We then begin to compartmentalize them with those who are truly dysfunctional. This tendency may squelch honest and positive attempts to be different or revolutionary, and to challenge the status quo. Instead of celebrating that, I fear our messages and actions instead promote conformity.

Wicked offers us some great lessons to consider and argue about. I don’t doubt that there are many among us who’d rather have conformity; an Emerald City where everyone is indistinguishable. However, I remind them of our own history. It’s a good thing that our founders challenged the norm and had the courage to be outliers. Perhaps they were labeled as “wicked” in their day.