Football players have started a dangerous trend.
Don't get me wrong, I love football to an admittedly psychotic extent, but something needs to be done about the atmosphere football players are living in nowadays. What's worse is nobody seems to care.
In four years, Maurice Clarett went from a prized freshman running back with a national title to serving at least three and a half years in prison. Last month, police had to spike his car's tires and pepper spray him after he tried to elude police in an SUV containing four loaded guns.
Baltimore Ravens running back Jamal Lewis spent four months in jail last year after trying to make a cocaine deal on his cell phone. Teammate Ray Lewis was arrested for a double murder right after the Ravens' Super Bowl win in 2000, but pled guilty to a lesser charge and testified against two other people who were involved. Perhaps the worst case is former Carolina receiver Rae Carruth, who is serving a 19-24 year sentence in prison for conspiring to murder his pregnant girlfriend.
Just two weeks ago, Chargers linebacker Steve Foley was shot by an off-duty police officer in an incident involving drunk driving (his blood alcohol level was .233). This is not even mentioning the rash of arrests concerning the UW football team in the past year. Why is there so much violence and crime involved with football players? True, other sports have problems, but nothing anywhere near the extent football does. Even hockey, which has fights within the game, has very few problems with crime.
Yet the NFL and NCAA do nothing to curb this problem. Fans look the other way, blinded by their adoration of football and all its facets. Something needs to be done now, before things get much worse. There is no way newly-signed Packer Koren Robinson should be able to play this season after driving drunk nearly 50 miles over the speed limit and making the police chase him down. Teams love taking chances on troubled players, and it backfires nearly every time.
Stringent penalties need to be introduced, and actually enforced, for breaking the law. Make it similar to the steroid policy, where it is four games for the first offense, six for the second and a full season for the third. By ignoring the crime problem, the NFL is just inviting more crime to make its way in.
Don't just stop with the NFL either, the NCAA needs to shore up its policy as well. Threaten not just suspensions, but scholarship revocations for problems with the law. Since players need to be three years out of high school before going to the NFL, stop the problems before they get to the pros. We don't need another Lawrence Phillips or O.J. Simpson.
As much as it pains me to say it, it seems the Vikings' new head coach Brad Childress may be ahead of the curve on this one. Minnesota has had more problems than even the Raiders with the law over the past five years, but Childress is making a stand. He cut Koren Robinson and has run a tight camp this season, perhaps preventing another ""sex boat"" scandal before it starts. If only commissioner Roger Goodell would do the same and begin a new era in his first year as commissioner.
I'm not optimistic, but it can be done.
Zach is a senior majoring in journalism and can be reached at zlkukkonen@wisc.edu.
