Suspended
New NFL commish boots “Pacman” Jones and Chris Henry for a year and half a season, respectively. Good.
Jones’ mother, Deborah Jones, said: “I just pray that this can be changed. This is not fair for him. It’s just not fair.”
I’m glad Ms. Jones’s logic wasn’t applied to Don Imus, who deservedly got the boot from MSNBC.
April 12th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Neither of them was a model citizen in their college days, either.
April 12th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
A sign of the times: ESPN’s Draft rag for the past several years has an image that looks like a devilish icon…
):p
Now that the NFL is coming down like a box of hammers on players like Pac Man and, hell, the Cincinnati Bengals, et al, it’s easy to go up and down the rag for “must avoids”. 7 teams I know will not even look at bad boys: Colts, Steelers, Lions, Bears, Seahawks, Chiefs, and Patriots.
It’ll be interesting to see where the following players slide: DT Tank Tyler (NC St), DT Marcus Thomas (UF), and S Brandon Merriweather (Miami). All are first round talent that have, ahem, blemishes on their records. Something tells me they’re gonna be waiting around till late Saturday to hear their name.
April 12th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
I think about Marcus Thomas with senioritis’s comment in mind. Jones and Henry got a pass at WVU, more or less. But Thomas was shown the door. Perhaps that sent him the message that Jones, at least, never got (arguably, starting with his mama, who seems oblivious to her son’s real character). I have to say I’m not sure, given Thomas’s lack of contrition after being kicked off the team. Merriweather and Tyler, I just don’t know enough about.
Given NFL conservatism, I say all of these fellas fall five spots at the least. Good. That’s at least a million dollar hit.
I have a student who wanted to write the need for a strong NFL player conduct policy for his final paper for FYC. We agreed that’s probably not possible now, since nobody seems to be arguing against it (why defend something nobody’s attacking?). Unfortunately, the college ranks seem ready to provide fodder for more talk of player misconduct.
May 1st, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Upon my grand return to Gainesville, I had the unfortunate distinction of living next to Marcus Thomas at a southwest Gainesville apartment complex. It was on more than one or eight occasions that I had to page the courtesy officer to shutdown the ruckus over there. This, of course, was all before Marcus was kicked off the team, deservedly so. I was witness to some other events that I would rather not post about on a public board, but I will say that on the day of the Orange and Blue game, well, that was the last I saw of Marcus and his roommate. And it looked like he left in a hurry, too. Some may say it looked like abandonment. Through the windows you could see open drawers and strewn clothes, most of the furniture still inside. Stayed like that for months. Some of his nonfootball buddies came looking for him. One of them peed on my porch wall.
I tutored a large number of the football players at UF and, with a few exceptions, liked them all a great deal. I also know that every possibility is afforded and exhausted before a player is dismissed. By the time it comes to a player being kicked off the team, it is far beyond the question of whether it was deserved.