The Browns think they can control Johnny Football mania, which pretty much explains why this franchise is the NFL’s longest-running joke.
When The Post tried this week to get a credential to cover Johnny Manziel’s first rookie minicamp this weekend in Cleveland, the Browns replied that the national media was being barred because the team wants to keep a “tight grip” on its new quarterback and keep the attention from turning into a frenzy.
A team spokesman said the Browns — most likely, new coach Mike Pettine, a former Jets assistant — had watched how the Tim Tebow situation was handled by the Jets and wanted to avoid a repeat.
Good luck with that.
The Browns will be able to tame Manziel Mania about as well as Prohibition kept people from drinking alcohol. And Manziel isn’t Tebow because Manziel actually has an arm and knows how to throw a football.
Never mind that The Post, like every other media outlet, was going to Cleveland with the expectation of writing a positive story — something that doesn’t happen too often for a sad-sack franchise with just two winning seasons since its return to the city in 1999.
Have we mentioned the Browns are on their fourth head coach in five years?
The team’s stance ranks high on the hypocrisy meter, too. The Browns were more than happy to sell 2,500 new season tickets and a boatload of new Manziel jerseys (even LeBron bought one), yet at the same time they’re trying to act like the former Heisman Trophy winner is just another player on their roster.
Witness owner Jimmy Haslam’s weird comments this week that Manziel needs to know he is nothing more than a backup quarterback and that Cleveland “isn’t Hollywood.”
Way to immediately dampen the enthusiasm of your perpetually let-down fan base, Jimmy.
Yep, Manziel needs to just shut up and do his job, apparently. And be like the oh-so-professional Haslam, whose truck-stop chain is currently an indictment mill for the feds for defrauding their corporate customers out of millions of dollars.
The Browns had to know they weren’t just getting a quarterback when they traded up to take Manziel with their second pick in the first round last Thursday. Manziel is already a cultural phenomenon, so much so that the joke is the NFL wants him eligible for the draft every year after setting all-time draft ratings records last week.
Manziel is like a microcosm of the NFL itself — must-see TV with an insatiable following that’s hungry for any scrap of news they can get about him.
If the Browns weren’t interested in the “Hollywood” part of the Manziel package, they shouldn’t have drafted him. They can tilt at windmills all they want, but there’s no separating the two.