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Chris Henry, of course, is an idiot. A complete idiot. The Cincinnati Bengals are even bigger idiots for taking a chance on him. His scouting report described him, in a thinly-veiled way, as being undisciplined and having a poor work ethic. And he got drafted anyway.

But I am starting to wonder what all of his fans are thinking right now.

Do you feel cheated? Or are you angry at the Bengals for releasing him? Does he deserve another chance if he beats this latest charge?



Is he even from planet Earth? (it would explain why he doesn't understand the laws of this land)



Henry has been a problem child since he entered the NFL. Scratch that. Since he was in college. He was ejected in one game (while in his third year at West Virginia) for two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties, including one where he threw a football at, and kicked the leg of, the defender he had beaten on a TD pass play.

When he was escorted off the field, he gave the crowd the bird. Was he suspended for the next game? Nope, although he wasn't allowed to play in the first half of the next game against Temple. I'm sure that was a big blow to the Mountaineers' game plan.


At the end of the 2004 season, Henry was finally kicked off the team. That sounds about right, does it not? As long as a player doesn't miss any important games. And isn't this "trend" being played out all over the NCAA?

One could assume that Henry was kicked off the Mountaineers for something serious, but yet, that red flag never was raised by the Bengals when they drafted him. They continually draft players with character flaws and hope everything works out. And so far, it hasn't.

Odell Thurman, Frostee Rucker, A.J. Nicholson, and Mathias Askew, are all players who have had run-ins with the law. The snowball effect? The Bengals have had to scramble to fill these positions while giving up draft picks in the process, because their players are sitting out from suspensions.

                 (The Bengals Bunch, seen below, are just one big happy, felonious family.)


                                  

Getting Ahmad Brooks (who was kicked off the Virginia Cavaliers team) in the supplemental draft cost them a 2007 third round draft pick, but owner Mike Brown had this to say when skeptics questioned his Brooks' acquisition: ``The club's judgment is that any past transgressions were insufficient to deny him an opportunity to prove himself as a responsible NFL player" and he also noted that Brooks had no pending charges against him at the time of the draft. Ohhhhh. Nothing pending at the time.


Chris Henry, of course, had nothing pending against him either when he was drafted, but has been either arrested, investigated, and/or charged for various offenses, among them: sexual assault, possession of marijuana, carrying a concealed weapon, speeding, drunken driving, providing alcohol to minors, assault and causing property damage. One could assume he's a career criminal, but instead of getting the wrath of the NFL, he was given chances, over and over and over and over again. After all, isn't this just age-appropriate behavior for a young NFL star?

We, the football fans, want our players to be given the benefit of the doubt, but when players continually show erratic behavior and no discipline, why do we still beat the drum slowly and chant, "innocent until proven guilty"? They are to be presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. But if they did do the crime, they are still guilty of that crime, no matter what is proven in court. It's a technicality, but the truth. And the business world is not a court of law. They do not have to presume innocence of an employee. Only a court of law does.

Holding down a high-profile job while getting millions of dollars to portray a certain image does not hold the same standards as a court of law when determining guilt or innocence.

If you embarrass your employer, you should get fired. While those who can point and say, "well, he beat that felony possession charge" make a good argument that his guilt has been technically disproved, what about the court of public opinion? What about the fact that he may have beat a charge due to a good lawyer getting certain evidence to be dropped? While he may be "not guilty" in a court of law, he still probably committed the crime, and as a result, should be drop-kicked to the curb. Should having a good lawyer beat the rap really mandate you shouldn't get fired?

The public isn't that stupid, is it?

No, but the NFL Players' Union thinks we are. They continually enable these morons to become repeat offenders, and instead of taking a stance and saying, "you're an idiot, and you don't represent us well," they add-on more policies to give players another chance. The union is feeding this "feel good about yourself" garbage to the players, and we are standing back and applauding by renewing our season tickets and buying their licensed merchandise. Yeah, the NFL really feels our outrage.



Just watch. As soon as Pac-Man returns to the game and makes a great play, he will be that team's hero. Heck, his jersey will sell out just because he's a miscreant. And the NFL will profit from those sales.

It starts in high school, gets passed on to the college level, and once these idiots are in the NFL, they are set. The constant cow-towing to delinquents is apparent everywhere. We all know where the problem schools are, and it's not going to get better. Not as long as the BCS cash cow looms over every coach's head. Keep the highly-touted recruit, he might win us a conference championship. So what if he's been arrested twice in the last year. He's just a kid.

And when these "kids" do dumb things at 21, are we still going to defend them? They aren't kids. They are adults.

When we have men and women, as young as eighteen years old, making peanuts and sacrificing their lives to defend this nation and the very rights of all Americans, why must we insult them by labeling a twenty-one year-old man who repeatedly gets arrested as behaving "age-appropriate"?





It's only age-appropriate if we allow it to be.
It's only age-appropriate if we continually give these idiots more chances.

The solution is simple. If a drafted player has had any run-ins with the law prior to being drafted, he should get paid $75,000 a year and put on probationary status for two years. If he stays out of trouble, then throw the millions at him. But the way the current first-round draft contracts are being set up only encourages players to leave school early and be rewarded for not showing the discipline it takes to get a degree. Get out of school early, and we'll give you big bucks.

Update on Chris Henry, according to WLWT.com: "Henry and some other Bengals could face criminal charges in an incident early Sunday at BANG nightclub. Chris Henry, Chris Perry and Domata Peko were escorted out by police when the club closed, and a police officer working security around 1 a.m. said the players had become unruly."

"'They're destroying a ceiling in the back room here, and they're all highly intoxicated,' the officer said in a recording obtained by News 5. 'The bar owner wants them ejected from the bar, so we're going to try and eject them now, but they've been kind of rowdy all night.'"

"Multiple sources told News 5 that Henry was smoking a marijuana cigar inside the club and some of the players hung from a chandelier, ripping it from the ceiling. Witnesses also said the players sprayed champagne on patrons and lifted up women's skirts before they were escorted out."

Give an idiot big bucks with no discipline, and what happens?

Hasn't the NFL learned anything? Have we?



* Bengals players photo courtesy of SI.com