I have never played one of these before, but I saw it on Steam's front page, clicked the link, and that is a whole mess of bikers on one screen. So, do you control a specific one, or do you do what the title says and manage? I would love for it to be like a car game, so if you get bored, you smash your bike into another person and cause a chain reaction from hell.

I think the main focus of the game is controlling a team. Telling individual riders when to push forward and when to just stay with the crowd etc. It's definitely more of a strategy approach rather than bike-around-and-cause-mayhem.

probably similar to the football manager games, Championship Manager 2001 was released freeware, I expect the cycling manager is similar but instead of "kick ball into the goal. No not THAT goal! The other one!!" this will be "Pedal goes up, pedal goes down. Pedal goes up, pedal goes down"
Championship Manager is here (you have to register to get it):
http://www.championshipmanager.co.uk

Bah. Too bad, as the sheer amount of bikers would make for very entertaining crashes. Don't get me wrong, strategy is nice. I enjoy managing Sims and building massive fortresses to withstand sieges by my enemies. However, when you get this many bikers together, make it look good, and not have the ability to create giant crashes, it just feels like a missed opportunity.

I'm sure you can crash in the game. After all crashes are common in cycling and it would be strange if it was let out of the game.