Photo Illustration by Michael Katz/USA TODAY Sports. Original photo by John David Mercer/USA TODAY Sports

Whether or not he was paid for signing autographs or violated NCAA rules or elevated the basic hypocrisy within big-time college athletics, Johnny Manziel should drop out of college today.

He should walk away from the college football circus and turn pro, immediately. Don’t wait on the NCAA investigation. Don’t put his future on the line by lining up for the Aggies.

He should ignore the arbitrary and absurd NFL eligibility age-limit — the league might be able to keep him from playing professional football until May 2014,   but they can’t keep him from being a pro, status earned not by getting paid to actually play football, but simply by getting paid to be a football player.

He should immediately start training full-time for the NFL Draft with a quarterback guru like George Whitfield — something he  already has done this year and a full-time move he likely will make in January anyway. His NFL stock won’t get higher by playing another season of college football — not as much as it would if he single-mindedly dedicated the next nine months to preparing himself to actually play in the NFL. Among other propagated myths, college football has never been about prioritizing an individual player’s NFL development.

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And he should immediately start cashing in on his celebrity status: The massive shoe and apparel deal. The sports-drink deal. The trading-card deal. The dozens of other marketing deals waiting for the most popular college football player West of Tebow.

He should spend his fall practicing with an NFL quarterback tutor and doing a road show around Texas, being paid to sign autographs at every single high school he can get to in the three-month season.

He should spend the next nine months before the 2014 NFL Draft maximizing his preparation for life as a pro QB next fall — and sign a lucrative deal with CBS to be this fall’s studio analyst for its SEC Game of the Week or with ESPN to be a 2013 fixture on College GameDay this season. Think either couldn’t convince Home Depot or Chick-fil-A or Dr. Pepper to add another million dollars to its college-football sponsorship package to sponsor Manziel’s presence?

“Johnny Manziel, college football student-athlete,” made no sense the minute he led A&M over Alabama and locked up the Heisman Trophy. The only thing that makes sense right now — only borne out by the current brouhaha over Manziel’s signature and Manziel’s name all over the NCAA’s online store — is “Johnny Manziel, pro football player.”

Manziel — and, for that matter, Jadeveon Clowney — shouldn’t wait for the NCAA to determine his fate and certainly shouldn’t help prop up an college (and pro) system created to artificially constrain his personal and professional ambition — he should follow his instinct (and the instinct any of us would have), not to mention basic economics, and go pro right now.

Dan Shanoff is a regular contributor to FTW. Follow him on Twitter at @danshanoff.

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