Johnny Manziel Mar 4, 2017; College Station, TX, USA; Former Texas A&M Aggies quarterback and 2012 Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel watches a game against the Kentucky Wildcats at Reed Arena. Mandatory Credit: Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports

Johnny Manziel inserted himself into a Barstool Sports feud Saturday and came out in the end looking… more mature than you might expect. Well, at least more mature than his counterpart.

The drama started when Manziel added a photo to his Instagram story featuring himself wearing a shirt depicting actor and former Barstool personality Michael Rapaport in a clown nose. Barstool notably created and marketed the shirts last month after firing Rapaport amid a dramatic internecine feud.

Rapaport, who recently sent Barstool a cease and desist letter in an attempt to halt sales of the T-shirt, quickly caught wind of Manziel’s Instagram photo and issued a response over Twitter, mocking the embattled quarterback for his substance-abuse problems.

“Yo Johnny Manziel you cluck head bath salt sniffer,” Rapaport wrote, “I told you before you need SweatShirts it’s gets cold in Canada,you ain’playing in the NFL again Cluck Head. Take yourself to a meeting asap, before you have a relapsemo @JManziel2?? Saturday’s are for 12 Step Meetings.”

Manziel, as Rapaport crassly alluded to, has dealt with drug, alcohol and mental-health issues for much of his time in the public spotlight. Those troubles have cost him his NFL career and forced him to pursue a job in the Canadian Football League.

Manziel could have responded to Rapaport with a similarly personal dis that further inflated the feud. Instead, he wrote “That’s cool man you can make fun of AA, Mental Health, whatever sleeps at night.” And then: “I’m doing what I have to do to not be an asshole anymore. You should try it, life’s better on this side.

Rapaport did not seem to take Manziel’s message to heart, because he fired back that the quarterback was a “Bum Ass Pill Popper.”

Apparently through taking the high road, Manziel retorted by calling Rapaport a “goofy bum.”

Rapaport then called Manziel a “pillheadpunk” and twice repeated the “bum” epithet, because that seems to be the only insult these guys know.

This back-and-forth was pretty exhausting overall, but there do seem to be two worthwhile takeaways:

  1. Don’t make fun of mental illness and substance-abuse issues because those things aren’t funny.
  2. Every one of us can work on not being an asshole.

About Alex Putterman

Alex is a writer and editor for The Comeback and Awful Announcing. He has written for The Atlantic, VICE Sports, MLB.com, SI.com and more. He is a proud alum of Northwestern University and The Daily Northwestern. You can find him on Twitter @AlexPutterman.