Good for Goodell...

Let’s get this out right now. I have no sympathy for Michael Vick, Plaxico Burress, or Donte Stallworth. I’m tired of a different set of judicial standards for pampered professional athletes (as well as movie stars, rich heiresses with tiny dogs, etc.), so I applaud the NFL’s indefinite suspension of Stallworth and the same rumored punishment that may be coming down the pipes for Vick and Burress...

This is black and white (and spare me the bigoted ‘race card’ babble – any player of any skin color should be punished with equal severity). Vick condoned dogfighting on his property. Stallworth killed another human being with his car while intoxicated. Burress took a loaded firearm into a public place and allowed said gun to discharge.

If you or I had done any of the three aforementioned illegal acts, we would be avoiding a shower bend-over for a long, long time. In addition, when we finally got out of jail, our former employers would most likely not let us come back to work. You see, there’s that little box you have to check on a job application…you know, the one asking if you’ve ever been convicted of a felony? If you check that box and supply the subsequent detail, your application is 99.9% guaranteed to be food for the paper shredder...

So why should we cry and whine about denying these three detestable men their ‘right to earn a living’? Let them hop from the cracked pavement of a grungy street corner into the back of a rusty pickup truck at 6 AM and get them to mow lawns or do drywall. Why should their athletic gifts allow them to automatically start earning millions of dollars again the minute our justice system has finished giving them a slap on the wrist? The simple, logical answer…they shouldn’t. Giving someone a ‘second chance’ doesn’t mean giving them a free pass back onto Easy Street. Rehabilitation shouldn’t include an immediate return to swigging Dom Perignon and owning automatic weapons. Let the hammer come down...hard.

In Goodell We Trust!!!