The punishment brought down upon Texas A&M; quarterback Johnny Manziel is down right laughable.

On Wednesday, the NCAA and Texas A&M; announced that quarterback Johnny Manziel will be suspended for one half of a football game.

That is not a typo.

You read correctly.

One half.

“NCAA rules are clear that student-athletes may not accept money for items they sign,” the NCAA said in a joint statement. “And based on information provided by Manziel, that did not happen in this case.”

If he wasn’t guilty, why suspend him at all?

The suspension comes down, because while there is no evidence that Manziel received any money, he still managed to violate NCAA bylaw 12.5.2.1. That fancy mumbo jumbo means: student athletes cannot give permission to vendors or advertisers to use their name or receive payment for the use of their name.

We are to understand that Manziel signed thousands of autographs for select “fans” and was completely ignorant to the idea that these “fans” might sell these autographs.

Lets say Johnny works for Coca-Cola. He moves up the ranks fast and is trusted with the secret formula. He then shares this 127-year-old formula to Dr Pepper Snapple Group.

Coca-Cola comes down and says, “Johnny, what are you doing? You can’t give them the formula!”

Johnny says, “Sorry, my bad, I didn’t know that was frowned upon. If I had known they would use the formula to profit, I wouldn’t have given it to them.”

To which Coca-cola says, “That’s okay, Johnny, but we are going to have to take away your parking space. We hope this is okay with you.”

Does it sound like this pretend Coca-Cola is pretty stupid? Good, that’s the point.

Let’s look at what Manziel did and compare it to a local professional athlete who also received a suspension while in college.

In 2009, Oklahoma State wide receiver Dez Bryant was ruled ineligible for the entirety of the season for lying to NCAA investigators.

I do not condone lying, Dez should have told the truth. However, Bryant was suspected of having visited Deion Sanders’ home for a workout and having lunch with the former NFL corner back.

Bryant violated NCAA bylaw 10.1 which means: don’t lie to NCAA.

Look at it this way: Bryant missed an entire season for lying. Manziel is missing out on one half of football because he is a better liar than Bryant, and has convinced the NCAA that he is stupid.

Let’s all take a moment and applaud NCAA for their outstanding job in handling the Manziel autograph incident. We should also applaud them for bringing down the hammer with the half-game suspension and preventing other athletes from making the same mistake ever again.

A&M; has started the 2013 season 1-0 and has yet to take the field.