Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Wed: NFL Column- They thought The Pats were Bad...

So I was whaling on my triceps in the gym when a strange thought hit me. Another strange thought just hit me as I read that sentence but I digress...

So I read this article earlier Two Marvin Harrisons

It led me to think A: that more NFL players than just Michael Vick, Rae Carruth and Ray Lewis are involved in serious crimes.B: Maybe Marvin Harrison isn't the pussy I've always thought he was and C: How well do we actually know our athletes?

I've always said that I don't EVER want to meet Michael Jordan, because I've loved him so much, for so long. If MJ were a dick to me, or was sleazy or pretentious I'd lose a lot of enjoyment I've had and continue to have reading about and watching his career.

I want our athletes to be paragons of virtue, I want them to be faithful to their wives(good luck) to tell the truth(even less likely) and to reflect the virtues of humanity and competition. Maybe it's asking too much. It's almost certainly asking too much judging by the recent public humiliations of Roger Clemens, Marion Jones, and Barry Bonds. Considering that Ray Lewis might go back to the Super Bowl despite allegedly being involved in a murder from another Super Bowl party. Hell Pacman Jones was suspended by the league for a year and got in a fight with his bodyguard while supposedly on his best behavior.

Now it turns out Marvin Harrison might be the NFL's version of Nino Brown. We're just missing the image of him handing out Turkeys in a fur coat at this point. How many other athletes stay out of the spotlight and in the streets? Why aren't more of the alleged incidents in the article reported? Why don't teams spend more on background checks once they already have a superstar? Or is it that they adopt a don't ask, don't tell policy? Who is ultimately responsible and how many more athletes like Marvin Harrison allegedly is are there?

There's a lot of questions about athletes out there and I'm not sure we want to know the answers...

T