Kevin Blackistone FanHouse

Dear Redskins, Do the Right Thing

Kevin Blackistone — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:46:00 EST

Filed under: NFL

In July 1965, my father composed and mailed a letter (a letter was this thing you wrote longhand, or at a typewriter, which was this thing ... oh, never mind) to Edward Bennett Williams, who at the time was acting president of the football team for which dad owned season tickets, the Washington Redskins. Dad wanted to bring to the franchise's attention what he felt was a slight to its black ticket-holders.

Dad and other black ticket-holders were offended by the inclusion of "Dixie" in the Redskins band's game-day repertoire, as well as the flying of the Confederate flag in the stands.

"Let's make the Negro patron feel really welcome in 1965 and not accept his $6.00 admission fee and then publicly insult him," Dad wrote.

Williams replied later that month: "I agree with your suggestion and will see that it is carried out."

What was my father's favorite team hasn't insulted that significant part of its fanbase since, but it continues to do so to a significant part of our country's heritage by holding onto its nickname, a slur on American Indians.

The Supreme Court on Monday let the club off the hook again by citing a technicality in refusing to hear the appeal of a long-running lawsuit filed by a group of American Indians who've called the nickname Redskins offensive and therefore in violation of trademark law.

I don't know what it will take for the club I grew up rooting for to own up to the objectionable nature of its nickname as wisely as it did vestiges of America's sad history of enslaving humans, which it long incorporated into its show. But I do think it would help if Sam Bradford -- the reigning Heisman Trophy winning Oklahoma quarterback who declared for the NFL Draft last month after being felled again by injury -- refused selection by Washington, which likely will spend a high first-round pick on a quarterback given that its incumbant, Jason Campbell, is unsigned for 2010.

Bradford relayed to me through his athletic department's spokesman that he isn't interested at this time in addressing this issue despite having become a celebrity role model in the Cherokee Nation. His father Kent, whose great-grandmother, Susie Walkingstick, was Cherokee, told me Sam will speak for himself.

Sam should, of course. He ought not to be forced to take on entire struggle that virtually no athletes before him have embraced, most conspicuously football players of color who predominate the league. That's what happens when your career span averages just 3 years. You don't see time to dedicate your attention span to much beyond the game.

But I recall the story of how black AFL All-Stars reacted to Jim Crow accommodations and eateries at the 1965 AFL All-Star Game in New Orleans. They boycotted the game. Their white All-Stars joined them. And the game was relocated to Houston. It was believed to be the first time an entire city was boycotted by a pro sporting event.

Best anyone who should know knows, none of the few American Indians (that is the preferred phraseology of Russell Means, the Lakota founder of the American Indian Movement) who've played in the NFL ever suited up for Washington and, thus, faced this issue so squarely. Bradford is believed to be only the second American Indian to quarterback a major college team. Sonny Sixkiller is considered the first at the University of Washington in the early '70s.

The Oklahoma-based Cherokee Nation, the second largest Indian tribe in the country, did not respond this week to the latest setback in the effort to erase the most infamous American Indian sports mascot name. But it has made its stance on this matter very clear in the past. This is what Cherokee chief Chad Smith told Fanua Borodzicz at The Poynter Institute, media's preeminent training center, in 2003:

"Portraying Native American people as mascots relegates us to second-class citizenship. Mascots are for entertainment. They are fun. They are objects of ridicule for the opposition. And they are told to leave the field of play when the main event, the game, begins. No one would tolerate such treatment of African-Americans or Hispanics. Those ethnic groups are not subjected to the 'honor' of being mascots. Even here in Oklahoma, where Native Americans make up the largest minority group in the state, we have mascots that sport war paint and are called the Redskins.

"The American Heritage Dictionary definition of 'redskin' is the same as the definition for 'the n-word,' which newspapers avoid printing and broadcasters avoid saying. Yet those same broadcasters and writers will use the term 'redskin' without a second thought. The slap in the face is just as real, but verbally assaulting Indians, as opposed to other ethnic groups, is apparently not taboo in the media. Indian mascots instill into mainstream society stereotypical, offensive, and factually incorrect notions of what Native Americans were and are."

The Web site American Indian Sports Teams Mascots has a growing list of upwards of 200 teams that, over the years, have dropped offending nicknames in favor of something else. And guess what? Those teams have continued to attract their old fans, gain new ones and succeed. Who remembers now that the Syracuse Orange were nicknamed after an American Indian until the university's American Indian student organization protested in 1978 and Onondagan Chief Oren Lyons, a '58 alumnus and former Syracuse lacrosse star, told the campus that the mascot was derogatory?

Who recalls that before my father wrote to Edward Bennett Williams that the team's fight song not only included the refrain "fight for old Dixie," but also stanzas encouraging the team to "scalp" the opponent and written in stereotypical broken American Indian English like "we want heap more?"

The team dumped all of that, yet its popularity only continued to grow. It could do the same with the nickname now and not suffer any ill commercial effects, not that such a thing should be a concern when talking about disparaging an entire people.

This may be what some people call doing the politically correct thing. But what it was called when Edward Bennett Williams did it nearly half a century ago was, quite simply, the right thing.

Dear Redskins, Do the Right Thing originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:46:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hey, NFL: I Won't Get Fooled Again

Kevin Blackistone — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:34:00 EST

Filed under: NFL

This is the way I spent the intermission of last season's Super Bowl at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, when Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, and what seemed like a million people, poured on to the football field to perform a medley of The Boss' best hits: I departed my press seat in the stands with some friends to seek a cup of coffee on the concourse and wound up missing the entire halftime show.

I couldn't have cared less, either.

I don't go to concerts to see football games and I don't go to football games to see concerts.

So it was greatly underwhelming to me on Thursday when Jimmy Traina of Sports Illustrated's Hot Clicks, citing unnamed sources, reported that what's left of The Who -- the Beatles' era rock band that lots of rock heads will tell you is the greatest rock band ever -- had been chosen to play at this season's Super Bowl halftime show in Miami.

It struck me as anything but surprising, too.

What will make my eyebrows raise is when Super Bowl organizers lift the statute of limitations they imposed on halftime performances after the stupid stunt by Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake at Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004 at Reliant Stadium in Houston. Five years apparently hasn't been enough.

Indeed, since Jackson and Timberlake dared to, uh, strip the halftime show of its dignity, halftime organizers have refused to invite a contemporary music entertainer anywhere near the game, unless they are contemporaries of baby boomers. So they've served up Paul McCartney at 60-plus, The Rolling Stones led by Mick Jagger at 60-plus, Tom Petty at 60-plus with his Heartbreakers, and The Boss in February at 60-ish.

In between The Stones and The Heartbreakers, Super Bowl censors did allow Prince to perform. It was just a year before he qualified for his AARP card.

I'm not criticizing age. It's growing on me like kudzu. But this continued reactionary policy -- grown from the revival of the culture war this decade by Pat Buchanan -- to what happened five Super Bowls ago is what has grown so old that it's tired.

Who (no pun intended) would've thought that our old national pastime, baseball, would have hipper extra entertainment at its crowning contest, the World Series, than whippersnapper fast football? But that was Jay-Z and Alicia Keys who performed for the Yankees-Phillies' games in New York, busting out that hot "Empire State of Mind" cut.

The antiquated look of Super Bowl halftimes nowadays is probably a reflection of the game's paying audience, too. It isn't the kids who've kept Green Day on the Billboard Top 100 for over a year now who buy face-value $1,000 Super Bowl tickets. It isn't the youngsters who've kept Fabolous and The-Dream on the charts for 40-plus weeks who buy Super Bowl tickets scalped at thrice their face value.

Instead, it's the corporate muckety-mucks and the business partners they want to reward who wind up sitting in most of the seats on that last Sunday of the season, at least most of the good seats in the lower bowl. They can afford the highest-priced ducats and can use the tax write-off.

And who are their favorite music stars? The Who, The Who, The Who, and the like. Wonder if they'll let The Who sing famously:

C'mon, c'mon who? (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)

Oh, Who the f**k are you? (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)

The Super Bowl doesn't belong to the loyal every week fan. It doesn't belong to the players, either. They're just a sideshow, unfortunately, taking up three hours out of a weekend of big-money parties and wining-and-dining and schmoozing, and that part of it is a lot of fun, by the way.

The Super Bowl really belongs to business, big business, the biggest that exists on one fell weekend day. The halftime show now reflects what it's shuffling in its MP3 player, not what the players have looping in theirs.

If the Super Bowl halftime was reflective of the athletes who sandwich it, the halftime would look and sound a lot different, like it did in 2004 with Jackson and Timberlake. It would be 20-something rappers and crooners and dancers. They'd mostly be heard on urban radio, too, like Sirius XM's Hip Hop Nation.

It's almost forgotten now, but Janet and Justin were joined in Houston by rappers Nelly and Diddy (he was P. Diddy then) and the rock-meets-hip-hop star Kid Rock.

That was the last Super Bowl halftime I really paid attention to. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was at my buddy Steve Smith's house, he of Penn State and Raiders' fame and now battling ALS, with his wonderful wife Chie and their kids and their friends, including Tim Brown, of Notre Dame and Raiders' lore. All the guys and all the kids and ladies kind of switched seats when halftime started; we stepped away to the buffet and they took our places.

We all wanted to see Janet and focused in as she did her thing. Then there was some shrieking and a few of us looked at each other and asked if we saw what we thought we did. I suspected right then that that would be the last we saw of today's stars in today's Super Bowl halftime.

Who knows when the ban on contemporary entertainment at the Super Bowl will be lifted? But it can't stay on forever. The lead singer of what remains of The Who, Roger Daltrey, is 65. Who are his peers and peers of The Stones, McCartney, Petty and Springsteen? Is Pink Floyd next? How about Led Zeppelin and The Eagles? Fleetwood Mac? Could Aerosmith, which was the centerpiece of the 2001 Super Bowl halftime show, be an encore possibility following lead singer Steven Tyler's surprise appearance earlier this week at a solo concert of bandmate Joe Perry after having fallen off stage in the summer?

Spare me.

Twenty-somethings at the Super Bowl, for now and the foreseeable future, are for watching in the game, not for listening to at the break.

And that's fine by me. You can have my seat until the second-half kickoff.

Hey, NFL: I Won't Get Fooled Again originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:34:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Introducing an Athlete of the Rarest Kind

Kevin Blackistone — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:30:00 EST

Filed under: NFL

Madieu Williams hasn't changed his surname to reflect his Minnesota Vikings jersey number, 20. He doesn't star in a reality television show circling around his life. He doesn't even tweet.

He is the anti-Ochocinco, the mirror opposite of T.O., the quietude in the cacophonous world of the modern professional athlete.

But Williams' refreshing persona is not what is most remarkable about him. Instead, it is that he is a pro athlete -- no, make that member of the human race rather than sell him so short -- who actually has something worth sharing about his life, from which all of us can learn and our neighbors can prosper, and chooses not to pound his chest to the world.

To be sure, this is how Williams spent the Vikings' bye week last week:

He traveled back to his alma mater, the University of Maryland in College Park, Md., for an all-day meeting with Robert Gold, the dean of the School of Public Health, and 40 local and national experts in the field of delivering health care to underserved communities in this country and the Third World. He then endowed the new Madieu Williams Center for Global Health Initiatives with $2 million out of his pocket, said a few words afterward for consumption by a little media availed of his good deed, and then disappeared back into a life of anonymity -- as anonymous as a pro athlete can be -- that he prefers.

"It's remarkable. He has a real commitment to education and health."
- Robert Gold A Terrapins sports information official told me their office was unaware of their former player's act until after the fact. A Vikings media relations officer said he was unaware of their starting free safety's latest altruistic gesture until I called asking to speak with Williams. Williams' agent, Kenny Zuckerman, relayed my request to Williams to interview Williams about what he'd just done and called me back a few days later to inform me Williams had said all he would publicly about his generosity.

"He's quite a young man," Gold summed up Williams, now 28 and a six-year NFL veteran.

Gold told me he'd met Williams -- who immigrated to Lanham, Md., from Sierra Leone as a 9-year-old -- only a couple times as a Maryland student. Williams earned a bachelor's degree in 2003 in family science.

As a football fan, Gold said he was following Williams' career. But Gold said he didn't come to know Williams until the last year and a half after Williams inquired with Gold's office about establishing a scholarship.

Their initial discussion led to several more, as well as talks with another Maryland alumnus, Alice Horowitz, who had donated $2 million to the public health school earlier. The next thing Gold knew, Williams elevated their discussions to seeding something that could serve many rather than just a few.

What Gold didn't know immediately about Williams was that giving to many others wasn't new for him. He'd started his own foundation, the Madieu Williams Foundation, which focused on wellness and education for underprivileged youth. In Cincinnati, where Williams started his NFL career in 2004, he built a playground with the hope that it would inspire kids to get outside and be active for the betterment of their health.

At the end of last season, Williams traveled back to his hometown of Freetown, Sierra Leone, to cut the ribbon for the opening of an elementary school his foundation funded in memory of his mother, Abigail Butscher, a nurse. The school is located in Calaba Town, which is one of the poorest areas in Freetown. It is the first school built for this area.

"I was struck by two things [about Williams]," Gold said. "It was very unusual for someone so relatively young to be thinking in terms of gifts of this magnitude because they're still building wealth at that point in their career, and I also thought it was unusual that an athlete would be giving back to an academic program rather than athletics."

Williams isn't the first athlete to give back to his school. He isn't the first to give to something other than his alma mater's athletic department. But Williams' club is small, maybe the smallest when you consider he is so reticent to tout what he's done. He doesn't call along a TV crew. He just does his thing for someone else's benefit.

"And in each of the cases, he's supported health programs by supporting screening of underserved populations and referrals to care when they've identified people with serious risks to health related to high blood pressure or diabetes or other potential things," Gold said. "He did that in Cincinnati long before we ever talked. It's remarkable. He has a real commitment to education and health."

But Gold said the discussions he had with Williams weren't enough to convince Williams to contribute so mightily. Williams asked to meet with others Gold had mentioned to him to be sure of what he felt he wanted to do. The only time such a meeting could be made to meet everyone else's schedule was during the NFL season, and the only time Williams could spring free from Minneapolis was last week, his only off week.

"We knew it [Williams' gift] couldn't be formally announced until we could have this meeting and he could gather some final thoughts about it," Gold explained. "He shared his vision with them at the beginning of the day, and then we set up an agenda to allow people to talk about all the options for what might be done in a center like this in both Prince George's County and Freetown."

In Prince George's County, the Washington suburb in which Williams was reared, is the second-highest rate of AIDS in Maryland. In Sierra Leone, 27 of every 100 children die by age 5. Those are human statistics Williams told Gold he hopes to change.

A day after the meeting, Williams made his wish a reality. In doing so, he became the youngest donor of so much money to Maryland and the largest black donor to the university.

There is saying in the neighborhood that goes, "Don't talk about it; be about it." Madieu Williams is its marvelous personification.

Introducing an Athlete of the Rarest Kind originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:30:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Older, Wiser Tony Romo Leads Key Win

Kevin Blackistone — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 02:20:00 EST

Filed under: NFL, NFL Analysis

PHILADELPHIA -- In the wee hours of Monday morning, with a blue Cowboys' baseball cap pulled down snug on his noggin and a short sleeve T-shirt worn over a long sleeve one, Tony Romo looked like the boyish character we've come to see him as. He looked more like some guy who just finished playing a pick-up football game between fraternities rather than the multimillion dollar NFL quarterback for Jerry Jones' Cowboys that he's been for a number of years now.

But when Romo started to talk about what he'd accomplished, he sounded wise beyond his appearance.

"If you keep the mental discipline ..." Romo explained in a quite deliberate and thoughtful delivery, "keep getting better, keep learning what they're doing ... you can do some good things."

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I fully expected Romo to lean back in his seat at the podium and start stroking the gray hairs on his chin.

If the maturation of Tony Romo has not yet been completed, it is getting there. And when it does, the rest of the NFL is going to be where the Eagles found themselves in their home stadium, Lincoln Financial Field, on Sunday night -- on the short end of a final tally.

Indeed, Romo on Sunday night didn't play like the Romo of old. In fact, he hasn't played like the Romo of old -- the wing-it-from-the-seat-of-his-pants Romo -- for most of this season, or certainly, the last several outings. He was efficient. He was patient. He was heady, even. And he dared to be opportunistic only when the moment demanded it, specifically when the game was tied at 13 with a little over eight minutes to go and his guys were facing a third down with 14 yards to go near midfield.

"There were things I had to get better at to take another step, and I feel very confident in going about that process and coming along."
-- Tony RomoEarlier in the night, Romo explained, he saw the Eagles' cornerbacks sneak up on some routes by his favorite new target, Miles Austin. He put it in his memory bank until that crucial third down and, sure enough, Eagles' cornerback Sheldon Brown crept up again on Austin. Only this time, Romo had Austin stop and go. Romo threw a strike to Austin in stride behind Brown.

Austin split a couple other defenders and raced 49 yards into the end zone for what was the winning touchdown.

"Tony and Miles have a great feel for each other," Cowboys' tight end Jason Witten said in front of his cubbyhole, while Romo fielded a few questions a couple seats away. "We figured we'd take a shot there and it worked out good for us."

It gave the Cowboys control of the NFC East with a 20-16 win. It pushed their record to 6-2 while the Eagles drifted back to 5-3.

"Our quarterback played well again," Cowboys coach Wade Phillips said.

It was the fourth outstanding outing in a row by Romo. The previous three he didn't throw an interception, which was the longest such streak of his career. He didn't keep that category clean against the Eagles, having one long ball intercepted, but it wasn't hurtful. He wound up completing 21 of 34 pass attempts for 307 yards and the biggest touchdown of the game.

He not only won the game for his team, but he brought the Cowboys from behind, a 13-10 deficit.

Romo could always do this sort of thing, of course. That was what so attracted Jones to him in the first place, and inspired all of those comparisons to Brett Favre, premature as they were. Unfortunately, it was the bad side of Favre that Romo seemed to emulate a little too much. For now, that is history.

Romo didn't just win the game against the Eagles, a team that he and the Cowboys lost to, 44-6, in their final outing during an end-of-the-season meltdown last year. He managed Sunday's game, which is something else he hasn't been noted for doing.

"I think that gets overlooked the last four or five games," Witten said of the way Romo handled the game. "He's done really well. It shows his development."

Romo never let his team get backed up. He never put them in a situation where they had to be desperate. He was sacked several times but tucked the football away.

"I thought that was key for us," Phillips said of Romo's value of every possession.

That hadn't always been a trademark of Romo.

What Romo is doing right now won't, however, be good enough in the end. He is past being judged for what he does during the regular season. It is all about what he can do during the postseason, which is somewhere he didn't even get to a season ago.

But he appears, for now, to be headed in the right direction.

"I think, individually, I've improved tremendously," Romo said, "just from all the things I was able to take from last season, and not just that game [the 44-6 Week 17 loss].

"You always look at yourself from an honest perspective and you have to say, 'What do I have to improve upon?' And there were things I had to get better at to take another step, and I feel very confident in going about that process and coming along, and I've still got a ways to go."

Whether it is humility or maturity, Romo was sounding the right notes.

Older, Wiser Tony Romo Leads Key Win originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 02:20:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Suspending Cable Good for Everyone, Including Him

Kevin Blackistone — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:00:00 EST

Filed under: NFL

Tom Cable has been, pun intended, cooling off this week. He shouldn't have been no matter this being his Raiders' bye week on the NFL schedule.

Instead, Cable should've been in New York at a particular building on Park Avenue sweating in the most magnificent office in the joint -- the NFL commissioner's suite. He should've been there explaining to NFL boss Roger Goodell exactly how his assistant Randy Hanson wound up with a broken jaw after a team meeting last August that a district attorney concluded was the result of "some type of physical contact that happened between Mr. Cable and Mr. Hanson when [Hanson] went down." And he should've been explaining how police wound up asking him about a woman who wound up being thrown out of his home last January.

It shouldn't matter that the Napa County District Attorney Gary Lieberstein refused late last month to charge Cable with battery against Hanson while explaining that "one could say in a textbook manner that a battery had occurred." (Huh?) It shouldn't matter that the police cleared him of any wrongdoing 11 months ago with a former girlfriend.

What should matter is that the league appears to have a coach in its ranks with a temper problem that has hurt others and put the league in a poor light.

Goodell's deliberate handling of Cable's situation makes it appear that he has one set of rules for players and another set for management. Players get the hammer and managers get the brush. That shouldn't be allowed or imagined.
And after Goodell reminded Cable of as much, he would be smart to give the Raiders' coach another week to cool off -- under suspension.

The National Organization for Women president Terry O'Neill on Wednesday told USA Today that Cable should be suspended while his employer investigates the findings of an ESPN report that Cable struck his first wife Sandy Cable 20 years ago and that a former girlfriend Marie Lutz accused Cable of assaulting her as recently as last January.

Twenty years ago Cable was a graduate assistant at San Diego State. He didn't make it to the NFL until three years ago. It would seem overly officious from this seat for the league to punish Cable for a despicable and cowardly act a generation ago when Cable could only dream of coaching on Sundays and the league hadn't even considered a personal conduct policy, let alone implemented one. Furthermore, he's owned up to that incident, although disputing Sandy Cable's claim that his hand was balled into a fist.

In January, however, Cable was the Raiders' interim head coach when Lutz accused Cable of grabbing her and causing her to fall to the ground while pushing her out of his house. It resulted in an investigation from the Alameda Police Department. Cable said he cooperated with the cops and that they cleared him of any wrongdoing. Lutz also claimed Cable hit her several times before that incident.

That needs to be looked into further. And I would understand and expect a suspension of Cable by his employer or the league while both investigate, as they've said they are doing, this latest allegation against Cable of violence against a woman, just 11 months ago. That would seem nothing short of appropriate. And if Cable didn't avail his employer of his most recent visit from the law, I would understand and expect his employer dismissing him post haste.

But it's the commissioner's super slow-mo reaction to Cable's apparent temper tantrums that trouble me the most. After all, we're talking about a man in Goodell who quickly earned the nickname Crackdown Commissioner upon taking over a few years ago from Paul Tagliabue. He didn't wait for the wheels of justice to finish turning. He busted Pacman Jones and Michael Vick and some others, as well he should have, before their judges' gavels came down.

It's been hypothesized that Goodell has been deliberate in dealing with -- or not dealing with -- Cable in the wake of the Hanson case because Cable was viewed as a first-time offender of the league's personal conduct policy. Jones and Vick and the others were recidivists and wound up accused of riotous and heinous acts.

But in the wake of the ESPN report, which came on the show Outside the Lines, it doesn't appear Cable was a one-trick pony. Cable looks to be a multiple offender too. In the past 11 months he's generated two police investigations into allegations of violence and in both instances another person was hurt, seriously in one case and slightly in another.

Goodell's deliberate handling of Cable's situation makes it appear that he has one set of rules for players and another set for management. Players get the hammer and managers get the brush. That shouldn't be allowed or imagined.

After all, in coaches we're talking about people entrusted to keep everyone else in control, which means being in control themselves. It is disingenuous to treat them less harshly. New Mexico coach Mike Locksley was suspended last month for 10 days, which covered one game, for an incident in which he allegedly punched and choked a now former assistant, J.B. Gerald.

Goodell has been quick to discipline coaches in the past. He sent Joe Cullen, a former Lions' assistant coach, home for two games in 2006 after Cullen was busted twice in a two week period, the first time for indecent exposure and the second time for drunk driving. Cullen sought counseling and now assists the Idaho State football staff and speaks on behalf of NFL substance abuse director Dr. Sara Hickman to current NFL coaches and staff members about the dangers of alcohol. Upon being hired by Idaho State last February, Cullen said he'd been sober for almost 2½ years.

Goodell's swift intervention in Cullen's life was, no doubt, a wake-up call Cullen badly needed. It probably helped him become the inspirational comeback story that he is.

Maybe a similar intervention in Cable's life right now could spur the same sort of recovery from a temper that erupted a generation ago and apparently seeped again last summer and not long after New Year's. Sending Cable home right now wouldn't just be justified, it could very well be therapeutic.

Suspending Cable Good for Everyone, Including Him originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:00:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ravens Expose Broncos as Pretenders

Kevin Blackistone — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:40:00 EST

Filed under: NFL

BALTIMORE -- Bill Parcells is famous for assessing his team and the other guy's with a simple review of wins and losses, and an even simpler summation from that evidence: "You are what you are."

But even Parcells would've been hard-pressed to so easily judge undefeated Denver and .500 Baltimore before they met Sunday at Baltimore's M&T Bank Stadium. And he certainly couldn't have done so after their contest was complete.

To be sure, the Ravens proved what many of us suspected after they beat down the Broncos 30-7. The Broncos weren't as good as their spotless record through their first six games suggested, and the Ravens were a lot better than their lukewarm 3-3 mark alluded.

What we've witnessed between these two teams over the first six weeks is a reversal of fortune. And there is a very good chance the script is about to get flipped again and wind up where it should be. The Broncos host the defending champions from Pittsburgh on the second Monday night of November, and the Ravens head to Cincinnati, who surprised them in Baltimore earlier this season, and then go to Cleveland, which should be renamed Bye.

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That is, of course, getting ahead of ourselves, but the Ravens exposed the Broncos on Sunday as being well ahead of their development. They reminded everyone of why the Bears were so anxious to let quarterback Kyle Orton go: he is at his best not losing games and is heavily challenged to win them without lots of help.

Orton was yet another reason the Broncos didn't deserve to be mentioned on the rare perch of unbeatens this late into the season with New Orleans and Indianapolis, both quarterbacked by ridiculously prolific signal callers in Drew Brees and Peyton Manning. The Broncos' record compared to the Saints and Colts, but not their full body of work. Broncos' rookie coach Josh McDaniels almost admitted as much when it was all over in Baltimore and he finally made his way to the interview podium after a longer than normal wait. (It was his first loss as an NFL head coach.)
"This is always one of those things where you face a little adversity with a loss, and then you realize that maybe some of the things that you thought were good enough just aren't good enough."
-- Josh McDaniels
"This is always one of those things where you face a little adversity with a loss, and then you realize that maybe some of the things that you thought were good enough just aren't good enough," McDaniels said. "Even the things that you feel like you're doing well, after a loss, become more glaring, and you really take the time to evaluate what you are good at, and what you're not good at."

The Broncos thought they were good at defense. But the Ravens' offense scored 23 points against a Broncos' defense that came in ranked first in points allowed. They turned 11-of-18 third downs into first downs against a Denver defense that also was atop in the league in halting the opponent on third down.

The Broncos thought they were good at keeping the ball moving. But the Ravens' defense at least four times caught Broncos' running backs Correll Buckhalter and Knowshon Moreno behind the line of scrimmage after they entered the game leading the league in fewest negative plays.

The Broncos thought they were good in the return game with Eddie Royal. But the Ravens' special teams stymied Royal, who returned a kickoff and punt for a touchdown against the Chargers last month, and opened the second half with a touchdown return of its own by Lardarius Webb.

If the Broncos left Baltimore headed back to the drawing board, the Ravens entered their home stadium already having revisited it.

"We know what kind of team we have, and we know that we are capable of doing this kind of thing," announced Ravens' quarterback Joe Flacco after contributing to his team's win by completing 20-of-25 pass attempts including being perfect on his last 14 attempts.

The rest of the league would be foolish not to take notice.

After all, observers took note of these Ravens even in preseason when most everything is better off ignored. And none of us could ignore their very impressive beginning at the start of the season.

For the first time it appeared the Ravens had a potent offense to go along with their hallmark stout defense. They averaged 34 points per game in jumping to a 3-0 mark against two teams we know now are horrible (Kansas City and Cleveland) and one that is decent (San Diego). Then came a close loss At New England, a surprise loss at home to what is now a winning Bengals' club, and a two-point stumble in Minnesota, 33-31. That was their last outing before a bye week.

"It [a win] was there last week [Oct. 18], and we didn't come up with a way to win," Ravens' coach John Harbaugh said. "It was there two weeks ago [Oct. 11], and it was there three weeks ago [Oct. 4], but we didn't come up with a way to win.

"It was there today [Sunday] and we played better, coached better," Harbaugh summed up.

It was almost as if what the Broncos had done in getting to 6-0 was a reminder to the Ravens of their method of success: solid defense combined with mistake-free offense and opportunistic special teams. The Broncos were just doing a better job of imitating the Ravens than the Ravens had been doing their past three outings.

But this final tally didn't lie. It was just the record each team brought into this game that did.

Ravens Expose Broncos as Pretenders originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:40:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In NFL, It's Either Shape Up or Fade Out

Kevin Blackistone — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 01:50:00 EST

Filed under: NFL

Sylvester Stallone has Hollywood all a twitter (the old school use of the word) right now over an action flick he is producing called The Expendables. Reason is, it stars a bunch of guys' guys including Jason Statham, Jet Li, Julia Roberts' brother Eric and Mickey Rourke, who back in the day I thought Bruce Willis was a cheap imitation of. The movie is about a team of mercenaries who go to some South American country to overthrow a dictator.

Silly me. I heard the title and thought it was about NFL players and wondered who was going to play Kansas City running back Larry Johnson (he was still employed by K.C. as I wrote this) or exiled NFL cornerback Adam "Pacman" Jones.

After all, other than the food service workers chronicled by investigative writer Eric Schlosser in his best-selling 2002 tome Fast Food Nation, what laborers are more expendable than highly compensated NFL players?

More Coverage: Agent Says Chiefs, L.J. Reach Agreement

For starters, just like cleaning crews in slaughterhouses or teenaged burger flippers at ubiquitous fast-food joints, NFL players' jobs aren't guaranteed by a contract like athletes in other pro sports. Their careers on average are shorter than athletes in the other sports by more than half, tapping out at just over three years. A starter goes down and a backup replaces him in the blink of a commercial break.

And the only players who we as fans miss when they are gone are those few who are able to ply their trade for 10 or a dozen years or more and somehow endear themselves to us with their breathtaking play (Barry Sanders) or personality (Joe Namath).

But this is a lesson too many NFL players either never learn or too quickly forget. Larry Johnson, who wouldn't be playing Sunday even if his team was, is merely the latest example. What a dunce. Johnson was suspended by his team last week for one game for uttering one slur against gays and tweeting another slur within a 24-hour period.

This was from a guy who last year was arrested twice for mistreatment of women and has been arrested for the same two other times in the past six years. This was from a guy who last year was sentenced to probation. This was from a guy who last season was deactivated for one game for violating a team rule.

Johnson's agent Peter Schaffer told The Kansas City Star late Saturday night that that Johnson and the Chiefs had agreed in principle that Johnson would suffer a two-week suspension but be paid for one of those weeks. The original suspension would have cost Johnson more than $600,000. Now he will lose roughly half of that.

The team has won one game all year with him. Larry Johnson has only been a difference in adding more embarrassment to the franchise.
Two questions about Johnson's future remained unanswered, however: Will Kansas City elect to maintain his services and will the league commissioner Roger Goodell impose a further penalty?

I will be surprised if the answer to the first question is affirmative and the answer to the second question is negative. After all, neither Kansas City nor the NFL needs a lout like Larry Johnson.

The team has won one game all year with him. Johnson has only been a difference in adding more embarrassment to the franchise.

The league has Adrian Peterson and other running back stars who say the right things when they open their mouths and keep their names off of police blotters.

This is what former Kansas City coach Marty Schottenheimer told Sirius NFL Radio last week about the impact of Johnson's behavior on his continued employment in the NFL: "Let me ask you this, of the other 31 teams in the National Football League, who in the world is going to bring him into their locker room? Whether they're losing, or certainly they won't if they're winning. But, to me, the guy doesn't have the skill level to warrant the kind of BS that they're putting up with out there and I would not be surprised to see them run him right out of town."

It sounded trite when Michael Vick said upon his humble return to the league that playing professional football is a privilege and not a right. But he was closer to correct than not, despite the fact that being a pro football player is a job earned as fairly as any other.

After the 100,000 high school seniors are whittled down to 9,000 college players, and only 310 of those are invited to the NFL scouting combine from which NFL teams build their rosters, there isn't a whole lot that separates most NFL players from others at their same position. Idiocy, however, jumps out.

To be sure, see how many cornerbacks on any given Sunday can't cover most wide receivers one-on-one. Then remember that Pacman Jones is just 26, and in his return to the league after a one-year suspension, was able in at least one game to lead the Cowboys in tackles and force a fumble. Had he not thumbed his nose at a chance this year to play in Canada by stating some NFL team would be dying to sign him, he'd probably be back in the NFL after the Canadian Football League season concluded at November's end.

But Pacman too is a dunce. As 49ers coach Mike Singletary would say: "Cannot play with 'em. Cannot win with 'em. Cannot coach with 'em. Can't do it."

And we as fans couldn't care less either. The Cowboys' games are still selling out without Pacman, and their colors and logo are still among the best selling in the league. The only people who haven't forgotten Pacman are the people injured in that Las Vegas strip club melee he was involved in.

Likewise, the only people who won't forget Larry Johnson during what could be -- and should be -- a long and lasting absence from the NFL for him are those he's injured.

In NFL, It's Either Shape Up or Fade Out originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Sun, 01 Nov 2009 01:50:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sign of the Times: Repressive Redskins

Kevin Blackistone — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:15:00 EST

Filed under: NFL

Barack Obama and his family probably didn't meet the longtime neighbor of their new crib at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. William "Doubting" Thomas was in the hospital by the time the Obamas moved in Jan. 20. He died three days later from pulmonary disease. He was just 61.

But Thomas lived by day across the street from the White House -- 1601 Pennsylvania Avenue, or Lafayette Square -- under a makeshift shell of umbrellas and tarps. He decorated his digs with signs that read "Wanted: Wisdom and Honesty," "Ban All Nuclear Weapons or Have a Nice Doomsday," and "Live By the Bomb, Die By the Bomb."

Thomas (his real name was William Thomas Hallenback Jr.) was a protester. And the White House, our government -- ever respectful of our First Amendment right to free speech -- allowed Thomas to protest pretty much uninhibited from the moment he first plopped down in Lafayette Square on June 3, 1981, until he was hospitalized for the last time almost 28 years later.

More Coverage: Redskins Ban Signs From FedEx Field

Good thing for Thomas he didn't choose FedEx Field in nearby Landover, Md., where the local NFL team plays, to make his stand. He quite possibly would've been tossed summarily into the nearest hoosegow, especially if he dared express displeasure with the club's ownership and management.

Indeed, the worst-run pro sports franchise in the country, if not on the planet, has now turned into a repressive regime. According to Wednesday's edition of Dan Steinberg's D.C. Sports Bog from The Washington Post, the organization is cracking down on fans so put out by the team's dismal 2-5 record -- and even more dismal outlook -- that they've taken to sporting T-shirts and carrying placards expressing their disgruntlement.

There is no other way to describe what the club's owner, Dan Snyder, and his lieutenants are doing to upset fans other than imitating a government with distaste for dissent. After all, when things were going swimmingly for this club, you could bring in all the banners and sport all the T-shirts with homespun slogans that you wished. I know. I was there. I saw them every Sunday at the old RFK Stadium. The upper deck overhang and the lower bleacher seat railings were decorated every game day with colorful and entertaining signs celebrating the team and ridiculing the opponent.

But now that there is nothing to celebrate, the new ownership group -- in the front office for 10 years now -- doesn't want to chance having the rest of the world see what a growing portion of the club's longtime loyal fans are thinking. So in recent weeks, it changed stadium regulations. As Washington's chief operating officer David Donovan told Post sports columnist Mike Wise recently on Wise's radio show on WJFK: "The banners, we do have a prohibition against signs and banners in the stadium, and we don't care what they say. We take them down. They get in the way of other people viewing the game, and people get poked in the head -- that stuff happens. We have an absolute prohibition; we don't care what they say."

I remember when the club handed out signs for fans to hold up during big games. I don't recall the club ever ordering fans to hide or take off vulgar T-shirts that always popped up during the annual visit of the Cowboys to RFK or FedEx, where the team has toiled for 13 seasons now. But things were never as insular with this team's ownership as they are now because the outlook surrounding it was never so bleak.

The right of fans to express themselves is as time-honored a part of sports as keeping score. We cheer and support our favorites and jeer our rivals. And sometimes we turn on the very folks who are supposed to bring us good feelings. The latter is part of the game, too -- at least if it isn't totally disrespectful -- and those who can't handle it shouldn't be in it.

The Washington franchise has been around since 1937. It is one of the cornerstones of the NFL, not unlike the New York Giants and Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers. It is a billion-dollar franchise representing the nation's capital that makes it an example to visitors from around the world about how our sports teams are run. It is no longer setting a stellar example.

The team on the field is bungling its way through another season. The front office's approach to fixing it has turned the franchise into a butt of jokes. It has squandered draft picks and at times spent more money than any other club on personnel only to have the team produce more losses than wins. It has gone through five or six coaches (if you want to count interims) in the last decade. The Post revealed earlier this season that the team has sued longtime ticketholders who want to get out of ticket contracts they can no longer afford in a recession. The club's offensive nickname may be reviewed by the Supreme Court. Now the club is threatening free speech.

Thirty years ago, the Giants were falling apart in embarrassing fashion in large part due to a fight between co-owners Wellington Mara and his nephew, Tim. They'd just come off their sixth straight losing campaign in 1978 and it didn't appear the front office knew what it was doing. So then-NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle stepped in.

Rozelle mediated a truce between the Maras and had them hire a seasoned and respected football man named George Young to run their football operations. Young hired a no-nonsense coach in then-Patriots offensive coordinator Ray Perkins. Perkins assembled a staff that included Bill Parcells and a youngster named Bill Belichick. The Giants wound up making the playoffs five times in the 80s, winning the Super Bowl for the 1986 and 1990 seasons (as well as 2007), and have been a rock-solid franchise ever since.

The time is rapidly approaching where the NFL may want to revisit that piece of history as it relates to its franchise in Washington. I bet some fans would endorse it.

Sign of the Times: Repressive Redskins originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:15:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fail to the Redskins: Worst-Run Franchise on the Planet

Kevin Blackistone — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:23:00 EST

Filed under: NFL

They play in the largest stadium, FedEx Field in Landover, Md., in the richest sports league in the world, the NFL. Just a few years ago, they became the first team in the United States to eclipse the $1 billion mark in value. Each of the last three seasons they've paid out more than $100 million in players' salaries, including in 2007 when they topped the league with a $123 million payroll.

But the most Washington's NFL team has to show for its riches since Daniel Snyder bought it 10 years ago is a 2-3 playoff record. That is if you don't count the unprecedented ignominy it achieved last Sunday in losing 14-6 at home to the Kansas City Chiefs, which left Washington with just a 2-4 record over the first six weeks of this NFL season despite having played a winless team each outing -- believed to be a first such stretch against abject wretchedness in NFL history.

As such, the Redskins are now the worst-run franchise in pro sports in the country, if not on the planet.

This isn't an easily won designation. There are a lot of poorly run sports teams around, like Al Davis's Oakland Raiders, Donald Sterling's Los Angeles Clippers and Peter Angelos' Baltimore Orioles. But those teams aren't on the Forbes magazine list of ten highest valued sports franchises on earth like Washington.

And I'm not just venting because I was born in Washington D.C. and was all but reared in section 312 of RFK Stadium where my parents were fortunate enough to own what were once precious season tickets to Skins' games. I'm just not finding any team as underachieving as Snyder's club, given all that is at its disposal.

The wealthiest team on the list is Manchester United of the English Premier League, which is England's reining champion. The Dallas Cowboys are second and, although they haven't won a playoff game since 1996, they remain a perennial playoff team. Snyder's team is third and the rest of the top five is rounded out by the Patriots, two seasons removed from an almost perfect season, and the Yankees, who appear this baseball postseason to be steamrolling to another World Series title.

You have to go all the way to the tenth-wealthiest team, the Houston Texans, to find a club equal to Washington's lousiness, but at least it has an excuse: It's an expansion team. Washington's been around since before World War II and had been to at least one Super Bowl in each the 70s, 80s and 90s.

None of this is to suggest that value and profit are the only way in which sports success can be had. The New England Patriots, the most successful NFL team this decade, are traditionally near the bottom of the league's payroll ladder. That suggests outstanding management. But a lot more teams with a lot of money fare better than Snyder's club.

It isn't just all the money and so little to show for it that makes Snyder's team the worst managed that exists these days. It is all that swirls around it too.

The starting quarterback, Jason Campbell, was yanked against the Chiefs and replaced by 37-year-old Todd Collins.

The accidental head coach, Jim Zorn -- he was hired to be an offensive coordinator but got bumped up after no other viable head coaching candidate could be lured -- was stripped of his play-calling duties after Sunday's six-point offensive outburst. That job was expected to be handed to Sherman Lewis, who until the team called him two weeks ago was five years into retirement from the NFL and serving as a 67-year-old bingo caller at a senior citizen center.

Two of the team's key players, running backs Clinton Portis and Mike Sellers, had to be separated in the locker room recently.

There were the two reports in The Washington Post when this season kicked off that showed the team was adding injury to the insult of its loyal fans who were suffering with so much mediocrity. The first story uncovered that the team had sold tickets long thought to be highly coveted to scalpers. A second story found that the team was suing individual ticketholders who'd fallen on hard times in this recession for reneging on long-term contracts.

There are the growing anecdotes about what a lousy game-day experience fans have at FedEx, which I can attest to, where parking and leaving can be nightmarish and alcohol-infused rowdiness is at an uncomfortable all-time high.

And the U.S. Supreme Court has been asked to rule on whether the nickname of the team, Redskins, which always makes me uncomfortable to write, is as offensive as defined and should be retired. It's a fight began in 1992 when seven American Indian activists filed a lawsuit to challenged the name saying it was too offensive to merit trademark protection.

But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said earlier this year the group had taken too much time to challenge it under the statute of limitations.

"In a really perverse way of looking at things, the Skins are probably generating more buzz right now than almost any team in the league and that's good for publicity," Larry Grimes, a sports industry mergers and acquisition specialist, told me Monday from his suburban Washington office.

"Now, are they selling more jerseys?" Grimes asked. "Probably not. Is there a large segment of the market developing that ... just doesn't care anymore about the Redskins this season? That could very well be going on and we just won't know about it till all is said and done."

There are signs that Washingtonians are, indeed, getting restless. A sports talk radio station a few Sundays ago found takers outside FedEx for paper bags it offered fans to wear over their heads. A Post photographer captured a fan at the Chiefs game sporting a "Trade Snyder" T-shirt in a sparse crowd as the game wore down.

Owners can't be traded, of course. They can only be embarrassed.

Fail to the Redskins: Worst-Run Franchise on the Planet originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:23:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A Gift for Ron: Teammates Bound By Football and Life

Kevin Blackistone — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:14:00 EST

Filed under: NFL, FanHouse Exclusive

Until about three years ago, Everson Walls (right) was best known for what he took away: passes intended for receivers. Since then, he's become more known for what he's given: a kidney. After years of watching his one-time teammate and longtime friend Ron Springs being whittled away by diabetes, and losing hope in the wait for a life-saving kidney transplant, Walls, a former Pro Bowl cornerback, donated his to Springs early in 2007.

In A Gift for Ron, a memoir scheduled for release Nov. 3 from Lyons Press, Walls described to me in detail the moving story of how he shed selfishness as a star athlete to become a selfless organ donor. In doing so, Walls became the first pro athlete to donate an organ to a teammate. With Springs, he co-founded The Ron Springs and Everson Walls Gift for Life Foundation.

Two years ago this week, Springs, having risen from a wheelchair on the strength of Walls' kidney, walked into a Dallas hospital to have a cyst removed from his arm. He is still there. Upon being anesthetized, Springs lapsed into a coma from which he has yet to awaken.

Springs is awash in constant prayers and visits from his family and friends who underscore even more so now the importance of what Walls did, which was to save a life that is still here.

******

Excerpt from "A Gift for Ron", by Everson Walls with Kevin Blackistone

(From Chapter 1 - excerpted with permission from The Lyons Press, copyright 2009)

You wouldn't know how dire Ron's situation was from Ron. He was as selfish about his problem as he was selfless with his concern for others in the same boat.

Ron was a bright spirit in that dialysis center, just like he was when I met him in summer's dog days of my rookie training camp, and just like he was in the locker room after I was fortunate enough to make the Cowboys and become his teammate. He started tossing around jokes as soon as he rolled through the dialysis center's doors, trying to lighten the life-or-death load that weighed on everyone there, patients and caretakers.

"Here comes that crazy Ron Springs," someone would announce when we rolled him in. Everyone in earshot would chuckle if not laugh out loud.

Ron was praying under it all, though. So was I. We all were. We didn't say so to each other. We didn't want to, and we didn't need to. This was one of those times when deciding to pray was as frightening as it was necessary. You wanted to think that you didn't have to ask God to look out for a husband and father of three who sought in life only to make all those he encountered laugh and smile.

So Ron stayed Ron as much as he could. It was seldom that he let himself look less than upbeat. For one thing, he saw being on dialysis, which meant he was on the transplant list, as a blessing. He was certain a donation would come his way before his time ran out.

That was something else I learned from Ron: A challenge was no more than an opportunity. Those kids didn't have coats? No problem. We'll use our celebrity status to get them properly clothed.

So Ron asked me to start taking him to the gym when I went, which was almost every day. He said he wanted to stay in as good a shape as he could so that he'd be ready to take that transplant when it came and pick up his life again where the diabetes left off wrecking it.

"I want this vessel to be ready to receive that new kidney," he said.

I was glad because I felt like I was finally helping Ron feel better in earnest. It was like old times, too. Ron brightened up even more. We'd go to the gym, a new LA Fitness not far from where we lived. I'd do my workout. He did his for as long as he could. When he was ready to go, we left.

It wasn't easy. Sometimes Ron needed me to help him to the men's room. That was the hardest thing, harder than helping Ron stand and walk or pushing him here and there in a wheelchair. Helping another man in the bathroom was about dignity. But I did. It was necessary. And Ron and I moved on.

It didn't dawn on me then, but I was taking my onetime mentor under my wing. I was employing the lessons of teammate and friend that Ron cemented in me.

One day, I thought our dreams had finally come true. Ron didn't make a big announcement. He just mentioned sort of matter-of-factly that his nephew Chris shared his blood type, which made Chris a potential donor, and Chris was willing to take all the medical tests a potential donor had to take to see if he could give Ron a kidney.

I was ecstatic. We all were. Ron's life was about to be saved.

Ron had been down this road before, though. A niece who shared Ron's blood type said she wanted to be his donor and even started the battery of tests to make sure she was healthy enough. It happened at a Springs family reunion. I'll never forget the niece making a dramatic, teary-eyed announcement that she was going to save her uncle's life.

But along the way it was discovered she had become pregnant. Ron's hopes were dashed. He was very upset with his niece for pledging her kidney to save his life but allowing herself to get disqualified by getting pregnant.

So Ron didn't talk more about Chris after first mentioning him. And then, on that one day while we were at the gym, Ron crushed me when he told me Chris was ruled out.

I remember that moment now like it just happened. I could see Shreill's grandmother. I was thinking about her funeral. I could see Adriane's face and the faces of Ron and Adriane's kids. I recalled Ron's niece breaking down in tears at the family picnic. I could see those Fort Worth kids who needed coats and how Ron figured out how to get them. I could see the kids in the bone marrow unit, and I wondered how many of them made it home. And I fought and fought to keep the vision of Ron's funeral from materializing in my mind.

"Damn it, Ron!" I shouted angrily. "What blood type are you?"

"O positive," he said.

To this day I don't know why I'd never asked Ron that question before. Maybe it was because I didn't think he wanted me to because he saw me as someone who could look after his family should he not survive. Or maybe I didn't ask because somewhere deep down inside I thought I might be like most everyone when faced with this challenge, this opportunity, and would look the other way. I don't know why I didn't seek that answer earlier, but now I had, and I realized what it meant.

"Me, too," I responded immediately. "Hell, I'll go by the hospital and see if I'm compatible. You won't ever get a kidney at this rate."

Ron thought I was kidding. He didn't want to think I was serious because he was sick of getting his hopes up only to be disillusioned again in the end. It was an emotional roller coaster he was tired of riding. Adriane, Shreill, and I and all the kids were tired of riding it, too.

So the next week I started the journey to save Ron's life. And along the way I found a new purpose for the rest of mine, or it found me. It's like John Lennon wrote: "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

Although I didn't know it at the time, it was something my life had been preparing me for all along.

A Gift for Ron: Teammates Bound By Football and Life originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:14:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NFL Should Punt Rush Limbaugh's Ownership Bid

Kevin Blackistone — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:30:00 EST

Filed under: NFL

Six years ago, ESPN's NFL Countdown crew sat silent as a new addition to its show, the bombastic right-wing commentator Rush Limbaugh, suggested Eagles black quarterback Donovan McNabb was overrated by a sports media concerned about looking politically correct. ESPN pulled the plug on Limbaugh a few days later and the Countdown crew the next weekend apologized for having abdicated its responsibility to address Limbaugh's outrageousness.

On Tuesday, it was reported that Limbaugh was part of St. Louis Blues owner Dave Checketts' group that wants to buy the city's NFL team, the Rams. I can't sit idly by like the Countdown crew did so regrettably.

The NFL indirectly dismissed Limbaugh before. It shouldn't accept him back unless he wants to buy a ticket. After all, this is a man who said:

-- Of President Obama: "Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, ruled by dictate."

-- Of Michael J. Fox's struggle with Parkinson's disease: "He is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He's moving all around and shaking and it's purely an act... This is really shameless of Michael J Fox."

-- Of a black caller to his radio show: "Take that bone out of your nose and call me back."

-- Of the NAACP: "The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies."

-- Of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal: "This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation, and we're going to ruin people's lives over it, and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time."

-- And how could I forget, of the NFL: "Look, let me put it to you this way: the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons."

It is true that freedom of speech in the country is a protected right. Limbaugh can say whatever he likes and so can you and I. Indeed, he hasn't been taken to court and convicted for any of his repugnant statements and repulsive viewpoints.

But that doesn't mean a potential business partner or employer can't refuse him like a restaurant does of diners who refuse to don shirts and shoes. They can and the NFL should.

If the league accepted whatever bid the group including Limbaugh puts up, it would be a slap in the face to at least two-thirds of its players, and that is selling short the other third. If the league accepted whatever bid the group including Limbaugh puts up, it would be a slap in the face to at least two-thirds of its players, and that is selling short the other third. The two-thirds I am referring to are the NFL players who are black. The other third are players of every other hue, including white players who are likely to be far more enlightened and accepting of people of color -- people they've lined up next to and counted on -- than Limbaugh.

I'd hope that if the NFL did make such a foolishly unnecessary move to accept the Limbaugh group that black and white players would do as Limbaugh seems to threaten and turn the clock back to, oh, let's say, 1964, the period when black folks were marching in the streets and standing up to goons to demand our full inclusion in this country. That year, at the AFL All-Star Game in New Orleans, black players threatened a boycott -- and their white teammates joined them -- after many of them were refused service because of their race at several New Orleans hotels and eateries. Buffalo Bills black star Cookie Gilchrist organized the effort and it forced the game to be moved to Houston.

That was the first boycott of an entire city by a professional sports event. Black NFL players would do themselves a disservice not to pick up and walk away from a Limbaugh infested NFL ownership. Imagine how powerful a denouncement of intolerance that would be? This is a league that couldn't find a way to integrate its ownership with a group that included one of its most-beloved superstars, the late Walter Payton. How could it justify making room for Limbaugh?

That is yet another reason it would be public relation's suicide for the NFL to vote Limbaugh into its ranks and, I would hope, commercial suicide for it as well. At the very least it could be suicide for the Rams. What black player would want to toil for someone like Limbaugh if he didn't have to?

I'm hard-pressed to imagine any current owners wanting Limbaugh in their boardroom, either. They make appearances to be an apolitical lot, donating money to both sides of the political line of scrimmage. After all, when they want to build new stadiums they tend to want political support and taxpayers' dollars and that is more difficult to come by when your political bent is well-defined and it is, as Limbaugh would make it, to the extreme.

It is one thing for our pro sports leagues to inherit despicable social louts like one-time Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott and current Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling. Among other affronts, Schott, who took over the Reds from her husband following his death, infamously once called her black players "million dollar n***ers." Sterling bought the Clippers almost 30 years ago, long before court cases revealed him to be a racist landlord.

Baseball eventually removed Schott. I wish basketball would do the same with Sterling.

The NFL can slam its door shut to Limbaugh right now. Anything less would be wholly unwise.

After all, football has become America's pastime and it is embraced even more so now because it has finally come to be the meritocracy it long purported to be. Black general managers finally dot the league. Black coaches have won and lost Super Bowls and been retreaded like their white counterparts. The black quarterback controversy that once enveloped the NFL was over and done with when Limbaugh foolishly tried to reignite it.

The only thing that needs to be torched now is the idea of Limbaugh as an NFL owner. It alone is an incendiary thought.

NFL Should Punt Rush Limbaugh's Ownership Bid originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:30:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Maybe Crabtree's Not So Crazy After All

Kevin Blackistone — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:35:00 EST

Filed under: NFL

It is difficult, if not impossible, to see whatever Michael Crabtree is up to as anything other than idiotic. But I am like Samuel L. Jackson's God-fearing character Jules in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. "I'm tryin'. I'm tryin' real hard." And this is the sliver of light I see:

Crabtree is trying to be to the NFL what Curt Flood was to Major League Baseball. He is daring to be a revolutionary who leads a shackled group to freedom.

The only problem is neither Crabtree nor his handlers have couched his fight in such egalitarian terms. They seem merely to be out for self.

Maybe Curt Flood was out for himself, too, when he first thumbed his nose at the way pro baseball did business with its laborers in 1969. When Flood's employer of a dozen seasons, the St. Louis Cardinals, traded him to the Philadelphia Phillies in the fall of 1969, he refused to go. He thumbed his nose at baseball's so-called "reserve clause" that bound a player in perpetuity to the club owning his contract.

In a letter to Bowie Kuhn, the baseball commissioner at the time, Flood wrote: "After 12 years in the major leagues, I do not feel that I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes. I believe that any system which produces that result violates my basic rights as a citizen and is inconsistent with the laws of the United States and of the several states."

Kuhn dismissed Flood's challenge. Flood responded by filing a lawsuit against Kuhn and Major League Baseball. It wound up in the Supreme Court, where baseball won. Flood's career ended in a feeble comeback attempt with my hometown Washington Senators in 1971.

But Flood's challenge was a tipping point for free agency in baseball, which started in earnest after another challenge to the system in 1975.

The system Crabtree is fighting is no less restrictive and arbitrary. It is the so-called "slotting" system the NFL employs to remunerate draft choices. It just happens to make a lot more sense on the face of it than baseball's old reserve clause -- at least until you realize it requires nothing less than collusion.

The collusion comes in because the teams basically agree to pay their newly minted pros based on where they are selected in the draft rather than for what is their potential worth, unless, of course, you believe that where a player is drafted is equal to his value. As a result, the first player drafted is rewarded with the fattest compensation package; the second player is rewarded with the second biggest deal, and so on.

Crabtree was picked 10th in April's draft by the San Francisco 49ers. He is a receiver and was thought by most to be the best receiver coming out of college.

However, another receiver, Darrius Heyward-Bey, was selected before Crabtree with the 7th pick by Oakland. Heyward-Bey signed a five-year contract for $23.5 million. San Francisco then offered Crabtree the same length contract for $3.5 million less.

Crabtree has refused the offer. He has demanded not only Heyward-Bey money but, reportedly, a lot more -- maybe twice as much more. His handlers, like a relative of his I've known for years, David Wells, have suggested he's willing to sit out the entire season and re-enter the draft next year rather than sign with San Francisco for what he thinks is less than his worth. My attempts to contact Crabtree's agent Eugene Parker haven't yielded as much as a courtesy response.

I've been part of the choir singing that Crabtree is nuts. After all, a dollar today is worth more than it is tomorrow. He'll never recoup the offer on the table today, unless some team next year pays him more than what he thinks he's worth this year. That's highly unlikely. It would also be a sign that some other team has told him as much already, which would be tampering, a charge San Francisco just leveled against the New York Jets. The Jets have denied it and the league is about to look into it.

Crabtree isn't crazy if, however, it is the system he is waging war against and not the Niners. Given the beating his reputation is taking, he and his handlers would be wise at this point to adopt such a stance, too.

After all, slotting isn't fair. It's just neat and easy. That's why just about every pro sports league uses it. The NBA effectively implements a rookie pay scale that removes any bargaining from the process. (But at least a would-be pro basketball player now has Europe as an option.)

In the NFL, Team A pays Draft Pick No. 1 X-amount of dollars and every other team falls in line behind. Nothing else matters -- not the need of the team or the accomplishments of the drafted player. The players who will put their health on the line playing the violent game we love that makes the owners billionaires have little more bargaining power than Curt Flood did. It's take it, or leave it. Crabtree so far is leaving it. It is a move of incalculable risk.

If Crabtree maintains his protest, he won't likely be the next draft's hot new thing. It'll be someone else and he'll lose draft position and more earning power. And if he fares as well as Mike Williams, another highly regarded college receiver who missed a year between college and the NFL, he'll be out of the league before he can qualify for his pension. The league moves that fast and skills, perceived or real, can diminish that quickly.

But if Crabtree prevails and gets what he wants, which is to be compensated for what has been extrapolated from his college career rather than what rung he landed on in the draft, the reward will be immeasurable for draft picks that come after him. The NFL's human auction, whether Crabtree realizes it, will be busted.

Maybe Crabtree's Not So Crazy After All originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:35:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Callous NFL Sticks It to Main Street

Kevin Blackistone — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:30:00 EST

Filed under: NFL

They started playing night games. They gave away groceries. They held something they called "mortgage nights" to help folks who were having a tough time meeting their monthly housing obligation.

But the one thing baseball's bosses during the Great Depression refused to do was give away more of their games on radio.

They finally came to the conclusion that, depression notwithstanding, they would do nothing drastic in the way of retrenchments that would seriously affect baseball's time-honored customers or, as one owner expressed it, 'cheapen' the game," John Drebinger of the New York Times reported during baseball's winter meetings in 1932.

The economy eventually recovered and baseball thrived once more. There were no hard feelings from its fans who may have felt the national pastime could have been a little more forgiving by letting them hear over the radio their favorite teams they couldn't afford to see for the moment in person.

I suspect the bosses of our national pastime these days, the NFL, aren't ignorant of that lesson, otherwise they wouldn't be holding on to their blackout rule during these particularly tough economic times with a grip only Fred Biletnikoff with all his Stickum could appreciate.

It certainly would be a nice gesture if the NFL, which kicked off this season Thursday night in Pittsburgh, would let the estimated dozen teams struggling to sell out their home games broadcast those home games locally and let the folks who can't afford to be there in person watch from their sofas, if they haven't sold them. A measurement called The Fan Cost Index calculates the average cost of taking a family of four to an NFL game as $412.64. Ten teams cost that family even more.

Relaxing the blackout rule would go in lock step with some things some teams already have done to lessen the load on their fans. Most teams didn't raise ticket prices this season and a couple, like the lousy Lions, lowered them. (The Lions should actually be paying fans to come watch, but that's another issue.)

It would be even nicer if the NFL borrowed a page from the British Open and Tiger Woods' tournament in the nation's capital and let kids in for free. What would that hurt to give a few kids free seats if you can't sell the seats anyway? Or maybe some still rich benevolent business person in a blackout-threatened market can step up and buy the bulk of tickets and give them to some at-risk kids or out-of-work folks who could really appreciate the moment. That would save the game from a blackout, too.

The league's refusal to suspend its blackout rule this season, however, should remind every fan that gets angry when his or her team's Brandon Marshall has a hissy fit over money that the players that appear so selfish are just reflecting the league's greed. After all, the league between last season and 2011 will take in $11.6 billion from its broadcasters. It could certainly afford to cut its suffering markets some slack this one year. The TV money is already in the bank.

"This seems rather inappropriate in the current economy in that almost every stadium design in the last 20 years has sought to eliminate the everyday fan and charge half as many people [corporate clients] twice as much," Vanderbilt economics professor and former Kansas State football player John Vrooman told me Thursday evening.

At least baseball's bosses back during the depression had a legitimate excuse for keeping games off the radio, despite that radio had helped generate interest and income for minor-league teams. Ticket sales were baseball's main source of revenue, which is why one thing baseball owners did then to make ends meet was pit stars from its segregated league against Negro Leagues' players in an effort to sell ducats to black and white crowds. In the NFL, it's TV contracts that pack the coffer. The league has been blacking out games locally that don't sell out since 1973.

"The NFL was the most aggressive at cultivating television in the sixties," Dennis Coates, an economics professor at the University of Maryland in Baltimore and past president of the North American Association of Sports Economists pointed out to me Thursday afternoon. "Those owners were visionaries and they were right."

That may be the irony in all of this. The NFL nurtured a symbiotic economic relationship with television but won't cut TV a break when it could use it as well.

As such, a few people have suggested that the NFL is acting in a manner that bites the hand that feeds it.

"My worry is that if the NFL doesn't look at changing the rule, we're losing a fan base," Richard Clark, president of the Jacksonville City Council where Jaguars' fans are facing blackouts, told Time magazine this week. "I would like to think they would really, really look at those communities which are hardest hit and have an honest discussion about it, as opposed to saying this is the way we've always done things."

I think the NFL is just acting greedily. The most sympathy it is showing is by not holding teams to the 72-hour deadline for selling out before the blackout rule is enforced. That's what it did for Cincinnati this weekend. The league should come up with a more heartfelt audible than that and give its fans a break.

"If the teams are so eager to raise ticket prices after good seasons and willing to replace regular hard-core fans with corporate clients in club seats and fancy luxury boxes, then why don't they cut ticket prices in a recession?" Vrooman wondered.

The NFL offered a newfangled solution for fans in markets where blackouts may occur: NFL.com will re-broadcast the games for free starting at midnight after the games. How nice is that? If you can stay up on the last night before the traditional workweek starts and don't mind squinting at your computer screen for three hours, you can watch your home team that was blacked out.

Of course, if you can't afford to fall asleep on the job because so many others would be happy to have it, and you cut back on Internet service to save a little dough, then you're just out of luck, again.

Callous NFL Sticks It to Main Street originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:30:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Vick Continues on Road to Redemption

Kevin Blackistone — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:55:00 EST

Filed under: NFL

PHILADELPHIA -- "Michael Vick is headed to the interview room," an Eagles official announced late Thursday night in the home team's locker room at Lincoln Financial Field as we in the media scurried about querying this player and that one about the much-ballyhooed return of quarterback-turned-convict all of us had just witnessed. So we hustled to the locker room door leading to the interview room and waited for the subject of our new desire, and continued criticism, to speak.

Turned out, he was even more impressive confronted by us than he had been earlier in the evening confronted for the first time in two football seasons by rampaging defensive linemen and linebackers. That was quite a feat because Vick, the vanquished Falcons' quarterback, was just about perfect -- 4-for-4 passing with one run for one yard that should've been for none or worse -- playing a few plays in the sport he had foolishly removed himself from with criminal activity two years ago.

More Coverage: Awkward but Happy Debut | Protests Fizzle

But what Vick did after the game, in which his new team beat the Jaguars, was more important than what he did in it. And what he did before the game was more important too, making an appearance in a Newport News, Va., bankruptcy court where he let a judge know that he fully understood his responsibilities to his creditors.

That's what it is all about for Michael Vick this year. It isn't about football. It is about what he does before and after his games. After all, it wasn't poor decision-making on the field that chased him from the game; it was poor decision-making off of it.

But ever since he was let out of Leavenworth and we started paying close attention to him again, he's said and done the right things. He did at his first press conference after joining the Eagles where he didn't read a contrived statement like A-Rod did at spring training. Thursday was just the latest example.

He spoke with the humility you would expect of a young man who wasted so much so quickly. He was respectful of every question fired his way. He was a sympathetic figure.

"I just want to help this football team win, whatever I have to do" Vick said when asked what he hoped his role would be when the regular season started. "I just want to be able to make plays, to be able to say I contributed and that I helped this football team reach that one common goal. That is winning at the end of the day and hopefully wining a championship.

"I am humbled," he said, sporting a long sleeve collared shirt that was as white, as angelic white, as it could be. It draped over his dark jeans that tumbled into a pair of high top Nike basketball shoes that were as heavenly white as his shirt.

There will undoubtedly be those among us who root against Michael Vick for the rest of his life because of what he was convicted and sentenced to prison for doing, torturing dogs to death in an intrastate dogfighting operation he bankrolled and helped oversee. A handful of them turned up outside of Philly's stadium hours before kickoff. Three women carried a handmade sign denouncing Vick as a murderer. Another woman carried a T-shirt she unfurled when asked that called Vick her "dog." That was it.

It was refreshing to see in a city like Philadelphia that threatened to be so unwelcoming to Vick, and has an infamous history of nastiness, that it could turn the other cheek and give him a chance at redemption. The Eagles fans in Lincoln Field, a smattering of whom even sported Vick jerseys that at least one local sports store said it wouldn't sell, even greeted Vick's entry to the game on the second Eagles snap with a cheer.

"We were all wondering how the fans were going to react, and when they started cheering we were going nuts," another backup Eagles quarterback Kevin Kolb said. "We all feel for him and we want the best for him, and obviously [Thursday] was a good start in that direction."

Vick has had one stumble in his return to the public's eye. He was caught enjoying a cocktail at a watering hole. He quickly learned from his new mentor, former NFL coach Tony Dungy, that wasn't the thing to do.

What is the thing to do is what he did for the Humane Society the other day, appearing in a promotional video for the animal welfare group talking about the need to care for pets. What is the thing to do is continue to show as he did Thursday night his contrition and remorse and thankfulness for the second chance he's received.

"I never envisioned myself coming out in a Philadelphia Eagles uniform," he said of his daydreaming in prison. "It was kind of a surreal feeling when I was coming out of the locker room and I see all these big guys in front of me and I see the Philadelphia Eagles symbol on the helmet and the green and the white. I had to kind of pinch myself to remind myself that it was real.

"It was something that I've been waiting for a long time and to actually suit up and get ready to go out and play a game, regardless of if it's the preseason or the regular season, it's been a long journey for me and I just want to do it right this time around and make the most of my situation."

Michael Vick is off to a proper start.

Vick Continues on Road to Redemption originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:55:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Plaxico Burress Should Be a Free Man

Kevin Blackistone — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 19:55:00 EST

Filed under: NFL

One day, he was as big a star in New York's sports galaxy as any. The next day, he was being jettisoned from it after being convicted of violating a federal law and faced with a possible jail sentence.

I'm not referencing Plaxico Burress just yet, however. I'm talking about Yankees owner George Steinbrenner back in 1974. The shipping magnate turned baseball owner was busted for making illegal contributions to President Nixon's 1972 campaign.

Steinbrenner, like Burress, agreed to a plea deal. Fourteen criminal counts against him were cut to one felony and a misdemeanor and The Boss wound up being fined $15,000 and never had to go behind bars. Fifteen years later, President Reagan, in one of his final acts, pardoned Steinbrenner.

Burress won't be so lucky, but he should be.

Olson: Justice Prevails in Plaxico Case | Burress Speaks

The Steinbrenner and Burress cases aren't quite the same. Steinbrenner broke a federal law; Burress was convicted last week by a New York State court. Steinbrenner's offense was non-violent; Burress's offense was carrying a concealed and unregistered loaded gun into a public place and allowing it to fire, albeit accidentally, into his leg.

At the end of the day, though, both men inflicted pain only upon themselves. Both have expressed remorse every day since. They don't seem likely to attempt such foolishness again.

As Burress told ESPN's Jeremy Schaap on Monday for Tuesday's airing of E:60, "I look myself in the mirror every morning and I'm like, 'You got yourself into it. You've got to get yourself out of it, get your life back on track, get back to doing what you love to do.' Four or five years from now, down the road, I'll look back on it and say I was reckless. I made a very bad decision, and I'm suffering major consequences for them. I took away what I love to do most, which is play football. I lost my job. That's where I'm at right now."

Where Burress will be late next month is in a prison somewhere. Thirty-two years old, he is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 22 for two years. He can get out a few months early for good behavior, but there is no getting out of at least that much jail time unless executives in the State of New York step in.

That is one of the unfortunate differences for Burress' case when compared to Steinbrenner's. Burress broke one of our country's officious zero-tolerance laws. It demands mandatory sentencing. It sees every crime and criminal in the same light and, as a result, is absolutely unfair. Burress is its latest catch. He is not quite like a sea turtle entangled in a tuna net, but close.

Burress was one of the most-fined players in the NFL for behaving in a manner his superiors considered insubordinate, but he wasn't considered a menace to society until now. He was not one of those NFL stars with a criminal record that stood out as much as his playing statistics.

Burress was clean. He just wasn't smart. He did something really dumb -- it should rank up there with some teammate breaking an ankle by tripping over the dog at the house, not with the actions of some recidivist reprobate at Rahway.

That doesn't mean Burress should not be punished. He could have hurt someone other than himself. He should've been cognizant of what guns mean to black males like him in this country. As I've pointed out before in this space, gun violence is the No. 1 cause of death for black men in the age span that star black athletes like Burress make up. And while gun deaths for everyone else have been trending downward in our country for several years now, a study from Northeastern University released late last year showed that gun homicides involving black youths surged by more than 30 percent during a five-year period starting in 2002.

Burress would better serve as a role model to kids looking up to him by being out of jail and remaining a constant reminder of what can happen when you walk out the house with a gun tucked in your jeans like some glorified gangsta in a rap video (Rapper C-Murder was sentenced earlier this month to life for a murder. Rapper T.I.'s new CD debuted this month at No. 29 on the charts while he is serving a year for a felony weapons conviction.)

In jail, Burress and his story of stupidity will be easily forgotten.

This would've been better left to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to handle alone. He could've acted as the old baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn did with Steinbrenner after Steinbrenner's conviction: suspend him from the game for a couple of years. (Steinbrenner was suspended from baseball a second time for paying a gambler to get information on Dave Winfield, who was suing Steinbrenner. Steinbrenner eventually was reinstated.)

I think I'm easily in the majority of people who never pulled the covers up at night worried about Burress being outside my home lurking down a dark alleyway. I think I'm among a similar overwhelming majority that won't feel any safer late next month knowing that he is behind lock and key.

In jail, Burress and his story of stupidity will be easily forgotten.Burress's case is why the American Bar Association has long stated that it is against mandatory sentencing in the criminal justice system. It first stated so way back when Steinbrenner was being convicted in 1974, when it adopted a resolution opposing "in principle, legislatively imposed mandatory minimum prison sentences ..." The ABA consistently has urged lawmakers "to authorize sentencing courts to impose a range of available sanctions, specifying maximum but not mandatory minimum sentences."

If I understand the law, President Obama can't pardon Burress because presidential pardons are reserved for federal offenses.

New York Governor Paterson can't pardon him, either, because there isn't some unknown proof of innocence or other mitigating circumstance.

All that can be done to spare Burress is to grant him a commutation, or reduction, of his sentence. So, no matter, we won't be seeing Burress for awhile and neither will his wife and children.

Burress should've thought about this consequence before he walked out of the house with a gun under his belt, but the rest of us should think about the priorities of our justice system in the aftermath.

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The Plaxico Burress Saga

On April 3, the Giants released Plaxico Burress, ending his turbulent four-year stay in New York. Click through to see more on how Burress' relationship with the Giants unraveled.

Jeff Zelevansky, Getty Images

Plaxico Burress Saga

On April 3, the Giants released Plaxico Burress, ending his turbulent four-year stay in New York. Click through to see more on how Burress' relationship with the Giants unraveled.

Jeff Zelevansky, Getty Images

David Tyree had the highlight-reel catch of Super Bowl XLII, but Burress had the game-winner. It was easily Burress' top moment as a pro, but what followed was far less rewarding.

Jim McIsaac, Getty Images

Unhappy with his contract situation, Burress skipped the Giants' mandatory 2008 summer mini-camp and then sat out much of the preseason with an ankle injury. Then, shortly before the start of the regular season, the Giants agreed to a five-year, $35-million contract extension with the disgruntled receiver.

Evan Pinkus, Getty Images

No mandatory mini-camp, no preseason, no problem. In New York's Week 1 win over Washington, Burress made 10 catches for 133 yards.

Seth Wenig, AP

In a stunning Week 6 Monday night loss to Cleveland, Burress scored a touchdown but was otherwise shut down, all part of a sub-par season that saw Burress fail to top 100 yards receiving in any game other than the opener.

Diamond Images / Getty Images

Burress had a bit of a meltdown in the Giants' Oct. 19 win over San Francisco. The NFL fined him $45,000 for his actions in that game, when he verbally abused an official and threw a ball into the stands. That came just two weeks after the Giants suspended Burress for their Oct. 5 game for missing a team meeting.

Evan Pinkus, Getty Images

In an easy New York win over Baltimore during Week 11, Burress tweaked his hamstring, which had him set to be inactive in Week 12 against Washington - until he suffered a more serious leg injury.

Kathy Willens, AP

Out at a club, just hours after it was reported that he would be inactive against the Redskins because of his hamstring injury, Burress suffered a gunshot wound to his leg - self-inflicted by accident.

Stephen Dunn, Getty Images

Burress surrendered to police Dec. 1 and was charged with two counts of illegal handgun possession after shooting himself in the leg at a nightclub. The Giants also suspended him for the rest of the 2008-09 season.

Louis Lanzano, AP

Burress found himself the subject of a lawsuit in late December, allegedly for striking a woman with his car. Then in March, Burress was cited for four traffic tickets on one stop - speeding, improper display of tags, improper lane change and improper window tinting.

Chris McGrath, Getty Images

Plaxico Burress Should Be a Free Man originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Tue, 25 Aug 2009 19:55:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Michael Vick Finally Has Proper Mentors

Kevin Blackistone — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:40:00 EST

Filed under: NFL

Michael Boddie was 17 when his 16-year-old girlfriend gave birth to their second child, a boy. Shortly afterward, Boddie went off to serve a three-year stint in the Army that left the rearing of his progeny to the mom, Brenda Vick, in a rough-and-tumble section of Newport News, Va. She wound up raising her first two children, and two to come a couple years later, with help mostly from her parents.

Meanwhile, the father of her children, Boddie, who did marry her five years after the birth of their second child, bounced from job to job in Newport News' shipbuilding industry, struggled with alcohol and drug abuse and, according to one person, "chose for nearly 22 years not to be a part of Mike's life."

More Coverage: Reid Knows About Second Chances

Mike was the first son of Boddie and Brenda Vick. He became the highest paid football player in the NFL with the Atlanta Falcons before throwing it away by financing a dogfighting ring for which he was busted and imprisoned.

Thursday night, a little less than three months after serving 18 months of a 23-month federal sentence, it was announced that Michael Vick got a second lease on a lucrative football career from the Philadelphia Eagles. Most important, he got his second chance on a team led by Donovan McNabb.

After all, Vick wasn't in need of a team to commence his redemption. Talking about where he would fit in and how much rust he had on his legs and arm is really missing the point given how he fell so far and so fast.

As Lance Armstrong and Sally Jenkins would say, this isn't about the football.

No, what Vick was in need of wasn't being with this team or that one, it was being in the presence of something he never had most of his life - a male mentor, a black male mentor, to be specific.

Vick is straight out of that deep end of the statistical pool of black boys from fatherless upbringings (President Obama is a success story for the shallow end) who are more likely to engage in troublesome behavior. He paid for it. Those dogs paid for it. His mom paid for it.

Vick's father wasn't around like my dad, and when he was, Boddie wasn't helping his son with homework, or playing catch with him, or coaching the little league team, or taking him to sporting events, or introducing him to Carter G. Woodson, W.E.B. DuBois and Paul Robeson. His father wasn't around like McNabb's dad, Sam, who worked for a power company in Chicago for 25 years rearing Donovan and his big brother Sean in a near Huxtable-like household.

Vick's dad was, instead, according to an admission by Boddie himself, helping him set up dogfighting arenas during a brief breakdown of their estrangement in Vick's college days.

Donovan McNabb can't be Vick's dad. It is too late for that. Donovan is 32; Vick is 29. The incomparable, upstanding retired coach Tony Dungy, who has been counseling Vick since before Vick's release from prison, is picking up where Boddie apparently never did. That Vick will be with a team, any team, before this week is out, as Dungy predicted, is due to the respect for Dungy's measure of a man more than anything else. If anybody can get Vick to understand what he did wrong and what he needs to do to right himself, it is Dungy, author of yet another best-selling book about character. The only other place Vick could have landed that I think could've been better that Philly is Pittsburgh, where coach Mike Tomlin is not only a Dungy disciple but a son of Newport News, too, who is only eight years Vick elder.

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Michael Vick

PHILADELPHIA - AUGUST 13: Coach Andy Reid of the Philadelphia Eagles talks to the media about signing Michael Vick after the game against the New England Patriots on August 13, 2009 at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Patriots won 27-25. (Photo by Drew Hallowell/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Andy Reid

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Philadelphia Eagles head coach Andy Reid talks to the media about the signing of Michael Vick on Thursday, August 13, 2009, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Yong Kim/Philadelphia Daily News/MCT)

MCT

A fan dressed in a Michael Vick jersey watches an NFL preseason football game between the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2009, in Philadelphia. New England won 27-25. Vick is back in the NFL, landing a job with the Philadelphia Eagles. Agent Joel Segal confirmed the quarterback's signing, shortly before the team announced it in a text message. The Eagles gave Vick a one-year deal with an option for a second year.(AP Photo/Michael Perez)

Humane Society of the United States president Wayne Pacelle, second from left, takes questions from media who were forced to stay on the sidewalk during a pit bull training class which teaches basic dog care and was attended by Michael Vick, Sat., August 8, 2009, in Atlanta. Vick arrived at a suburban Atlanta community center to talk to inner-city youths about how to deal with potentially violent dogs. The former Atlanta Falcons quarterback entered the New Life Community Center through a back entrance Saturday for an event put on by the Humane Society of the United States. (AP Photo/John Amis)

A vehicle turns the corner taking Michael Vick to a back entrance after passing security measures as he arrives for a pit bull training class which teaches basic dog care, Sat., August 8, 2009, in Atlanta. Vick arrived at a suburban Atlanta community center to talk to inner-city youths about how to deal with potentially violent dogs. The former Atlanta Falcons quarterback entered the New Life Community Center through a back entrance Saturday for an event put on by the Humane Society of the United States. (AP Photo/John Amis)

Dustin Meadows of Barnesville, Ga., arrives with his dog Jack Jack for a pit bull training class which teaches basic dog care but was turned away because Michael Vick was at the meeting, Sat., August 8, 2009, in Atlanta. Vick arrived at a suburban Atlanta community center to talk to inner-city youths about how to deal with potentially violent dogs. The former Atlanta Falcons quarterback entered the New Life Community Center through a back entrance Saturday for an event put on by the Humane Society of the United States. (AP Photo/John Amis)

Washington Redskins fan Brian Hoysa holds a sign in support of quarterback Michael Vick during NFL football training camp at Redskins Park on Thursday, July 30, 2009 in Ashburn, Va. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

ASHBURN, VA - JULY 30: Washington Redskins fans show their support for quarterback Michael Vick during opening day of training camp July 30, 2009 in Ashburn, Virginia. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

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NEW YORK - JULY 27: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell answers questions from the media after reinstating Michael Vick on a conditional basis on July 27, 2009 at the InterContinental Hotel in New York City. (Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Roger Goodell

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But McNabb is the next best thing. He can be that guy who can help Vick regain the footing in the pocket of athletic limelight. He can be that link in a lineage that Vick needs desperately to be hooked to.

It is that brotherhood of black quarterbacks that McNabb quietly has been all too willing to lead. There is the story about Illinois quarterback Juice Williams going through a tough time and calling on McNabb, whom he knows because both hail from Chicago.

"He's a big brother/uncle, a mentor," Williams told The Philadelphia Daily News last month. "He's a guy I've known for many years. He's very similar to how I play football and how I am off the field: very cheerful, very humble and wants to win. He's a dynamic player and a guy I look up to."

Williams told the Daily News that he got to know McNabb through McNabb's father, whom Williams described as a respected neighborhood elder. McNabb's dad is now a respected elder in the NFL after co-founding the National Football Players Father's Association.

"It just happened that his son was Donovan McNabb," Williams told the Philly tab. "Me and Mr. McNabb talk about life in general; how to overcome obstacles. After a while, when I started to take football seriously, that's when he introduced me to his son."

That's who Vick can look up to. He already has. Vick first met McNabb on a recruiting trip to McNabb's alma mater, Syracuse. McNabb hosted Vick, who wound up going to Virginia Tech.

McNabb never forgot Vick, even after Vick melted down on the field and, eventually, off of it.

This is what McNabb told The Washington Post two summers ago as Vick was being scheduled to go on trial: "I'm a supporter of Vick. That's because I'm a good friend of his, and also, we're guys that obviously compete to win the Super Bowl. We push each other ... It's an unfortunate situation, and I just hope everything works out well for him where he can get back out on the field."

McNabb hadn't changed his tune when Eagles' training camp opened and he talked to FanHouse's Dan Graziano.

"I know that he's able to train now with [trainer] Tom Shaw," McNabb told Graziano. "And I'm looking forward to him being reinstated and having the opportunity to get back on the football field."

We don't know yet if McNabb knew then what we learned Thursday. But it is a good thing for Michael Vick he got a second opportunity to play with his one-time recruiting trip host.

Michael Vick Finally Has Proper Mentors originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:40:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NFL Unjustly Blackballing Michael Vick?

Kevin Blackistone — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 20:01:00 EST

Filed under: NFL

To borrow from the vernacular of this first recession of the 21st century, Michael Vick is a toxic asset. To be sure, a Forbes magazine survey released last week found him to be the most-disliked personality in sports. (Forbes once rated the Kevin McHale of the Timberwolves as the best general manager in sports, too, so consider the source.)

The only difference between the toxic assets on Wall Street and Vick is that there are some negotiations underway to turn financial investments gone bad into stakes that are viable. In the football world surrounding Vick, we haven't heard of any such chitchat. There is something wrong about that.

Whitley: No Winners in Vick Soap Opera

As President Obama would say, let me be clear: I have a dog, a Nova Scotia Duck-Tolling Retriever. I donate to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. I've written and stated on various platforms that I think what Vick admitted to doing with dogs was heinous and that he deserved every day of the 18 months for which he served in prison after being convicted of running a dogfighting operation. Dogfighting is and should be illegal in this country and any other that considers itself civilized. I don't feel bad about what Vick brought upon himself the past couple of years.

I am not comfortable, however, with the fact that none of the 32 franchises that make up the NFL have sought thus far to bring in -- even for a quick look-see -- a player who when we last saw him in 2006 was considered so talented that he was the league's highest-paid player.

NFL boss Roger Goodell conditionally reinstated Vick late last month shortly after NFL training camps started opening. Goodell said Vick can sign with any team and begin playing by the sixth week of this season. Reporters in every NFL market started querying their local teams almost immediately about their interest in Vick and, so far, at least two dozen teams have said they're not interested. Several teams declined to comment and a few offered the stance the Packers took Tuesday, which was noncommittal at best.

This is how a case of collusion is constructed. I trust new NFL players' union head DeMaurice Smith is watching closely.

After all, Vick still isn't 30; he turned 29 just six weeks ago. The only thing he should have on his body from being out of the game for two years, and locked up for much of it, is rust. A training camp and a few preseason games should knock that off. Vick was about to enter his prime in quarterback years in the NFL.

That isn't the main reason that Vick's absence so far at an NFL training camp is conspicuous. It is because of who else is in NFL training camps.

When Vick ran himself out of the league before the start of the 2007 season, he had led his original NFL employer, the Atlanta Falcons, to a 38-28-1 regular season record and a 2-2 mark in the playoffs. His regular-season .567 winning percentage was sixth best among other quarterbacks then with at least 40 starts. Some of those quarterbacks, who he was better than then, are still playing today.

Some are guys who've been given second leases on their careers like Chad Pennington, who was reborn last season in Miami. He led the Dolphins to an 11-5 record in 2008 after going 32-29 with the Jets. His winning percentage, .558, still isn't as good as Vick's.

Despite Kerry Collins going 12-3 as a starter last season with the Titans, he still has a sub-.500 mark after all his years in the NFL.

Marc Bulger fell under .500 last season after a horrific campaign with the woeful Rams.

Then there are the guys who've come on the scene just as Vick was leaving it, like this week's Sports Illustrated cover boy, Jason Campbell. He's just 16-20 as a starter and his bosses last offseason were rumored to have tried to pry Jay Cutler from Denver or move up in the draft in order to pick Mark Sanchez.

Matt Schaub has managed a 10-12 mark with Houston the past two seasons since picking up where David Carr left off. Carr was buried deep on the Giants' depth chart last season. He is now another backup in the NFL who doesn't possess the potential productivity of Vick.

Some of those guys I've mentioned are, no doubt, better pure quarterbacks than Vick. They throw the ball sharper. They look more like the prototype pro quarterback.

Vick was never the prototype; he was the new type.

Vick probably didn't hone his throwing skill while in the hoosegow. Until further notice, he probably is still the 53.8 percent completion passer he was when he left the league. That's terrible. Only one QB in the league last season was more erratic. Vick has only recorded a quarterback rating better than 80 once, which was his second season in the league. That stinks, too.

The last season we saw Vick, however, he posted more TDs through the air than ever, 20, and combined that with his most-lethal campaign ever as runner, which is what separates him from everyone else. He scampered for over 1,000 yards.

Imagine Vick being employed in a Wildcat system, the old-fangled Wing T or Wishbone-type of offense that was a retro rage last season? If there is a general manager or coach in the league who doesn't want that kind of threat in its offensive backfield they are lying. Wall Street gave a second chance to '80s finance crook Michael Milken and he hasn't strayed. He even continued paying his debt through philanthropy. Vick could do the same.

Vick can't afford to venture down the same path again that got him in so much trouble. One more transgression and he'll be in the same unemployment line like a record number of other citizens right now.

But Vick deserves that chance to screw up one last time, and if he isn't granted it soon he should get his lawyer Billy Martin to find out why.

NFL Unjustly Blackballing Michael Vick? originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Wed, 05 Aug 2009 20:01:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Following in Dad's Footsteps, McNair's Boys Now Face Fatherless Future

Kevin Blackistone — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:00:00 EST

Filed under: NFL

Most of us would be lying to ourselves if we didn't admit that Father's Day has become little more than another reason to rush to a greeting card store or kiosk. It is only for those of us whose memory of having lost our dad is still raw that the holiday resonates as it should.

It is against that backdrop, however, that made the third Sunday of June, when we are annually reminded to be thankful of our fathers, so refreshing. That Father's Day was restored to a purposeful rung for all to see. The President of the United States, Barack Obama, who grew up without the man who begot him, held a Father's Day event at the White House.

"I had a heroic mom and wonderful grandparents who helped raise me and my sister, and it's because of them that I'm able to stand here today," the president told kids, community organizers and dads like Dwyane Wade and Alonzo Mourning whom he invited. "But despite all their extraordinary love and attention, that doesn't mean that I didn't feel my father's absence. That's something that leaves a hole in a child's heart that a government can't fill."

It is too bad the father of four boys -- Junior, Steven, Tyler and Trenton McNair -- wasn't in the president's audience.

I certainly don't know whether those boys would be fatherless today had their dad, Steve McNair, witnessed in person the president's plea for dads not to forget or forsake their progeny. I don't know whether the event would have led the recently retired star quarterback back to the woman he married in 1997, Mechelle, with whom he was rearing his family.

I don't know if President Obama's heartfelt words would have convinced Air McNair, as he was known, to walk away from an affair he was having with a woman only a few years older than his eldest son, Junior, who is scheduled to graduate from high school next year. I can only guess whether the president's effort would've brought McNair to reevaluate his situation and weigh again whether it was worth risking whatever he had.

This isn't about passing judgment, though I wonder why and how a man like McNair could wind up in what turned out a fatal situation.

All I know is that four more kids -- four more black kids, four more black boys, especially -- were just tossed into what can be an abyss of growing up without a dad after their father, Steve McNair, and a woman he was dating, Sahel Kazemi, were found on the Fourth of July shot to death in a condo McNair leased. McNair was 36; Kazemi turned 20 in May.

Steve McNair Tragedy

NASHVILLE, TN - JULY 6: Former Tennessee Titan Eddie George attends a press conference in reaction to the death of former Titan star quarterback Steve McNair July 6, 2009 in Nashville, Tennessee. McNair was found shot to death in a Nashville condominium on July 4th, his girlfreinds' body was also found at the scene. (Photo by Rusty Russell/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Eddie George

Getty Images

NASHVILLE, TN - JULY 6: Tennessee Titans Coach Jeff Fisher speaks at a press conference in reaction to the death of former Titan star quarterback Steve McNair July 6, 2009 in Nashville, Tennessee. McNair was found shot to death in a Nashville condominium on July 4th, his girlfreinds' body was also found at the scene. (Photo by Rusty Russell/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Jeff Fisher

Getty Images

NASHVILLE, TN - JULY 6: Former Tennessee Titans players Eddie George (L) and Brad Hopkins attend a press conference in reaction to the death of former Titan star quarterback Steve McNair July 6, 2009 in Nashville, Tennessee. McNair was found shot to death in a Nashville condominium on July 4th, his girlfreinds' body was also found at the scene. (Photo by Rusty Russell/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Brad Hopkins;Eddie George

Getty Images

NASHVILLE, TN - JULY 6: A single bunch of flowers lies at the entrance to the Tennessee Titans offices and practice facility as team officials prepare for a press conference in reaction to the death of former Titan star quarterback Steve McNair July 6, 2009 in Nashville, Tennessee. McNair was found shot to death in a Nashville condominium on July 4th, his girlfreinds' body was also found at the scene. (Photo by Rusty Russell/Getty Images)

Getty Images

The things we are learning with every passing hour about this event are as troubling as they are horrific. None of it adds up to the quarterback, No. 9, we thought we knew from the touchdown passes he threw on television or the contributions he made to the Boys and Girls Clubs, and Katrina victims. We never really know our athletic heroes, of course, anymore than we do anyone else we see only through the media's lens. Who knew, for example, that South Carolina's Governor Mark Sanford was gallivanting in South America with a woman that was not his wife or the mother of his children?

In the aftermath of the dual deadly shooting deaths of McNair and Kazemi, police have mostly speculated that McNair was killed by Kazemi and Kazemi committed suicide. There is no doubt about one thing, however: in the end, McNair's wealth and fame didn't shield his boys from what is the precarious upbringing of the single-mother home that so many, particularly in the black community, must navigate.

Money, or the lack of it, has a lot to do with rearing children, of course. "It Takes a Village" is nice appropriate African proverb by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But this is America where net worth unfortunately is more important than self worth. Maybe McNair's multimillionaire earnings from his days starring in the NFL can cushion the rest of the ride for his boys from childhood and adolescence to manhood.

But McNair's children are now at greater risk than others to meet a host of troubles. They are more likely to fail in school, to use drugs, to become teen parents and to commit crimes than they would have been with him around. It isn't that such things can't befall kids from homes that look like the ideal. Ask Eagles coach Andy Reid, who has a couple of sons who've run afoul of the law, or even retired coach Tony Dungy, who championed family as coming first but lost a son to suicide.

Growing up is never easy. But it just got inexorably -- and unnecessarily -- more difficult for the McNair boys. That is the rest of this event's tragedy. It is, it always is. It becomes about the ones -- the youngest ones -- left behind.

There are way too many kids in this country growing up without dads in their lives, upwards of 24 million. That's roughly one out of every three kids. For black kids, the ratio jumps to about two out of three.

Most have dad somewhere around. The McNair boys are now among the most unfortunate of that lot with their dad deceased. It is one thing to lose dad to a horrible disease or accident. It is another thing, I can't help but imagine, to lose him to violence like this, as opposed to violence serving his community or country.

Now it is on their mom, Mechelle, to carry them forth alone, just like too many black women in particular are left to do these days.

McNair knew as much. He and his four brothers were reared by a single mom, Lucille, in rural Mississippi. He had athletic talent. It carried him to college and he fashioned it into a long and lucrative pro football career.

Maybe McNair's four sons will walk the same path. If they do, they'll be what he had been till last weekend: lucky.

Kevin B. Blackistone is a panelist on ESPN's Around the Horn and the Shirley Povich Chair in Sports Journalism at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. A former award-winning sports columnist for The Dallas Morning News, he currently lives in Silver Spring, Md

Following in Dad's Footsteps, McNair's Boys Now Face Fatherless Future originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:00:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Look at the Facts: Stallworth, Vick Cases Radically Different

Kevin Blackistone — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:05:00 EST

Filed under: NFL

Michael Vick and Donte' Stallworth have a lot of things in common. They are professional football players. They stand six feet tall. They are 28. They are black. They are in trouble with the law.

There the comparison ends, or at least it should.

NFL Suspends Stallworth | Mariotti: Goodell Gets Tough

But ignorance and illiteracy are not against the law in our country and, even worse, appear to be on the rise. To be sure, there are many people among us, like Washington Wizards center Brendan Haywood, who think that the trouble Vick and Stallworth got themselves into with the law is somehow similar and, therefore, the resolutions to their troubles should be too. As Haywood commented Wednesday on his blog at Yardbarker.com, echoing not only lots of folks on the street and people with blog accounts, but even some supposedly learned interpreters of current affairs (i.e. journalists): "So let me get this straight, Michael Vick gets two years in jail for killing dogs and Stallworth gets only 30 days for killing someone? Now they say that justice is blind, but even Stevie Wonder can see that more than 30 days in jail was needed here. I think this was a terrible injustice."

That line of thinking is woefully misinformed.

For starters, Michael Vick - the absolutely wrong cause célèbre in the black community, or any community, for a racially prejudiced justice system - didn't just get out of prison after 23 months for killing dogs. (For those so concerned about racial injustice or any injustice in the justice system, drop a dime on The Innocence Project, or the Center for Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University Law School, or other like organizations that work to correct real miscarriages of justice.) As the black hip-hop poet Bomani Armah satirically encouraged his community in what became a controversial rap a couple of years ago: "Read a Book!"

Or in Vick's case, read the indictment and conviction.

Vick was sent to the hoosegow for operating a dog-fighting operation, and doing so across state lines. He violated a federal law that was punishable as a felony. The fact that dogs were killed along the way - which Humane Society CEO Wayne Pacelle reminded me just a month ago that Vick admitted to doing - was just a particularly gory inhumane detail.

Stallworth on Tuesday began serving a 30-day jail sentence for killing a pedestrian while driving drunk in Miami.

"The reality is they're [the two cases] apples and oranges," Alex Levay, a top Virginia criminal lawyer, told me on Thursday. "One is an accident [Stallworth] and the other [Vick] is a conscious decision to engage in an illegal act."

But many of us in the black community are so beaten down psychologically that we think these two cases are evidence that the system was out to get Michael Vick because it gave someone who killed another human being a much lesser sentence than someone who was convicted of inhumane treatment of canines. Please explain that to former Dallas Cowboys cornerback Dwayne Goodrich. He is black and this year will celebrate being at the halfway point of a 12 ½-year sentence for an after-the-show-its-the-after-party hit-and-run accident that killed two people.

Athletes in Trouble With the Law

June 16: Mel Hall, who played for four teams in his 13-year major league career, is found guilty of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl he coached on a basketball team a decade ago. He's sentenced to 45 years in jail. Click through to see more sports figures who ran into trouble with the law.

Ray Stubblebine, AP

June 17: Former quarterback Ryan Leaf, seen here after being drafted by the San Diego Chargers in 1998, was arrested at the Canadian border on drug and burglary charges. He was wanted in the state of Texas.

Mark Lennihan, AP

June 16: NFL wide receiver Donte Stallworth, left, pleads guilty to DUI manslaughter and will serve 30 days in jail.

Alan Diaz, AP

May 30: Florida cornerback Janoris Jenkins was charged with resisting arrest without violence.

Sam Greenwood, Getty Images

May 27: Falcons lineman Quinn Ojinnaka was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of simple battery. According to the police report, Ojinnaka got into a fight with his wife over a woman he added as a friend on his Facebook account.

Getty Images

May 29: Olympic silver medalist and former world kayaking champion Nathan Baggaley was sentenced to at least five years in prison on charges of supplying and manufacturing ecstasy pills.

Maxim Marmur, AFP / Getty Images

May 25: Former NBA star Jayson Williams, seen here during his manslaughter trial in 2004, was arrested after authorities say he punched someone in the face outside a nightclub.

Brian Branch-Price, AP

May 25: Miami Dolphins defensive end Randy Starks was charged with using his truck to hit a police officer who tried to stop the vehicle on foot.

Getty Images

May 16: Buffalo Bills fullback Corey McIntyre was arrested and accused with exposing and fondling himself in public.

Getty Images

May 15: Bruce Smith, who was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame earlier this year, faces multiple charges after being pulled over for speeding.

Chris O'Meara, AP

It was a horrific thing, as I wrote months ago, that happened to Mario Reyes, the 59-year-old laborer Stallworth struck with his black Bentley while driving drunk in the wee hours of March 14. Stallworth didn't own up to it immediately but, unlike Vick, didn't attempt to mislead investigators. He pled guilty and reached a confidential financial settlement with Reyes' family that led to his apparently light sentence for an error in judgment that will haunt him the rest of his life.

Levay pointed out to me that any prosecutor worth his salt queries the victim or victims for their opinion about the case in which they find themselves.

The Associated Press reported that Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle cited Stallworth's lack of a previous criminal record, cooperation and willingness to accept responsibility as factors in the plea deal that followed the financial statement and resulted in a month-long sentence. The AP reported that Rundle said the Reyes family -- particularly the victim's 15-year-old daughter -- wanted the case resolved to avoid any more pain.

"For all of these reasons, a just resolution of this case has been reached," Rundle told the AP.

Levay told me that part of Stallworth's restitution in this case can be seen in the terms of the settlement, whatever they may be. After all, many South Florida media outlets described Reyes as the breadwinner for his family.

It was also reported that Reyes may not have been in a crosswalk when Stallworth struck him. That is known in the law as "contributing negligence," and in some states, like Virginia, Levay told me, such a finding voids a financial settlement. That won't be the case for Reyes' family.

"The state can consider these circumstances," Dallas Criminal Court Judge John Creuzot reminded me Thursday. "It's not surprising at all in this deal. When you're in a situation where someone can make financial compensation...that can be part of the equation."

It is trite to say that his family can't bring him back, but in Stallworth the family can replace solace from income that their lost patriarch provided. They may not have been able to do so with Stallworth locked away for years and unable to draw an NFL paycheck. As it is, no one knows when he'll be able to make up that part of his punishment because NFL boss Roger Goodell on Thursday suspended Stallworth, and rightfully so, indefinitely.

A similar decision from the commissioner could still befall Vick, and if it does that will be yet another thing he and Stallworth have in common.

Their cases, however, will forever remain dissimilar. This isn't about dogs versus humans; it's about fact versus foolishness.

Kevin B. Blackistone is a panelist on ESPN's Around the Horn and the Shirley Povich Chair in Sports Journalism at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. A former award-winning sports columnist for The Dallas Morning News, he lives in Silver Spring, Md.

Look at the Facts: Stallworth, Vick Cases Radically Different originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:05:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rodney Harrison Doesn't Deserve Pass

Kevin Blackistone — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:06:00 EST

Filed under: NFL

Rodney Harrison is lucky. He didn't star in baseball. For if he had, no one would be discussing him as they are now in the wake of his announcement on Wednesday that he decided to retire from his game, pro football.

After all, Harrison is Manny Ramirez. He is Alex Rodriguez. He is Rafael Palmeiro. He is -- it seems forgotten in all the laudatory talk about his standout 15 years as a safety in the NFL -- a busted and admitted drug cheat.

Just a couple seasons ago, Harrison was suspended for the first four games of the year for violating the NFL's substance-abuse policy. He was 34 then and his Pro Bowl seasons were well behind him. He was able to keep going, apparently, not just by lifting weights and attending OTAs, but by using HGH, human growth hormone. Harrison admitted to obtaining HGH while pronouncing quite directly that he'd never taken steroids. It was almost as if he considered steroids an uglier stigma than his banned substance of choice.

In baseball, which we've picked on like no other sport for its mishandling of performance-enhancing drug abuse, there is no distinction between HGH or steroids or any other substance deemed against the tenants of fair play. At least there is no distinction made by those of us who support the game with ticket purchases and television packages, or write about it and broadcast it for a living. Most of us think that Ramirez, Rodriguez, and Palmeiro - and even those suspected, but not proven, to be drug cheats, like Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire - don't deserve to be celebrated anymore. Indeed, McGwire's capture of Hall of Fame votes is decreasing with time. He will never get into the Hall unless he buys a ticket like the rest of us.

But Harrison is being talked about as a Hall of Fame football player after a career starring mostly in San Diego and the last several seasons with the perennial Super Bowl-contending Patriots. He isn't being talked about as he would if he was an equally successful first baseman - a would-be Hall of Famer who blew his chances after being discovered to have, in part, cheated his way to the top of his game. What's the difference between juicing your body to hit home runs and juicing your body to wallop wide receivers? There isn't any in my book.

The different lens through which Harrison is being viewed as a football player who got caught - in a federal investigation into illegal drug dealing, no less - is clouded, too. Indeed, his announcement also revealed that he would be joining NBC as an analyst on the football games it carries. Imagine that.

What's the difference between juicing your body to hit home runs and juicing your body to wallop wide receivers? There isn't any in my book.I don't think any of us would be walking out on a limb with a prediction that Manny, A-Rod or Raffy will never remain in baseball as color men in the booth. And even though Roger, Barry and Mark have only been convicted of PEDs abuse in the public opinion court, who among us could envision them ever taking over for Joe Morgan? Such would be the height of disingenuousness when it comes to broadcasters' hiring of ex-jocks, which is already difficult to digest when they embrace former stars like Sterling Sharpe, who refused to engage the media as a player, and retired coaches like Bob Knight, who exhibited little more than disdain for most workers in the media.

Rodney Harrison's retirement announcement is a reminder of a double standard in sports from which the marvelous athletes in the collision sport of football benefit mightily and those in the supposedly non-contact skill sport of baseball do not. We all but expect muscular physical marvels that are football players, who slam into each other and then flex in exultation, to be running on something other than training table grub. We aren't shocked when a Rodney Harrison, whose playing style was highlighted by hitting as hard as possible, is asked to sit down for using something like HGH. Maybe Harrison's banned substance use explains why he was one of the most financially penalized players for being aggressive beyond the call of duty - dirty, some charged.

"People have called me a dirty player," Harrison said Wednesday morning in a conference call. "I'm a very passionate player. I also understand that this is not volleyball. This is a very violent, physical game, and if you hit someone in the mouth, they're not going to be your friend. That's what the game of football is."

But let a baseball player start looking like an outside linebacker and start slamming baseballs further than we recall before, and we ring the alarm and plead with the gendarmes to toss him from the game for a good spell, if not forever.

Harrison has always been one of the more insightful and even candid players to talk to after a game. He sounds good and looks good expressing his point of view on his game. I don't doubt that he would make for a fine commentator on the game he played with a frightening abandon for so many years.

But if the NFL is to be serious about keeping banned PEDs out of its game, it can't afford to let those it has caught reap post-playing career rewards as faces of the game in the media. That sends the absolute wrong message.

Rodney Harrison Doesn't Deserve Pass originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:06:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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