"Legal Trouble" Archive

I’m always one to say hold off on judgment until more facts come out. Well…as more facts come out not one of them yet as made Cowboys WR Dez Bryant look good. At this point we know that Dez’s mother (who is a mere 7 years older than I at 37) called 911 on him when the incident too place.

Based on his mother’s comments this isn’t the first time Dez has been violent toward her and she called the police because she’s fed up with it. If that’s true, it may explain why it’s rumored that he and his half brother got into an altercation that day. On the call, Dez’s mother sounds distracted and worried. You can hear someone else yelling in the background as the 911 operator pleads with her to stop arguing with the person in the background and focus on the conversation at hand. She describes Dez as wearing black pants and no shirt and apparently she is not sure where he actually lives. As others have pointed out his license plate says “Bail Me.”

Dez has been in trouble before but nothing he has done in the past made me think he would be in a situation like this. But it was clear beforehand that Dez doesn’t have a strong handle on his affairs—whether financial, on the field, or in his personal life.

[Listen to the 911 call after the jump]

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Fred Davis spotted in a DC athletes' natural habitat - the club.

So Charles Robinson over at Yahoo always brings the juice even if he didn’t actually write the piece. Yesterday he tweeted this article about Fred Davis being accused of assault and harassment and acting has his own defense attorney. According to the article, Fred Davis’ girlfriend[photo on page 2 of the link] (who I have no idea if he’s still with) was his original attorney in the case but she quit in May 2011. He began representing himself in the proceedings in April 2011.

A lot of people are confused when those of us who live in DC make jokes about the affect this city’s vibrant club scene has on players who come to town. Right now, we’re also placing bets on when the Redskins new QB RGIII will host a party at Cafe Asia or when Wizards pick Brandon Beal will celebrate his birthday at Stadium. The drama that happens in clubs and restaurants around here with rappers and athletes is the stuff of legend. Remember Albert Haynesworth? Brandon Banks? Hell DC athletes have made a strip club famous.

So when I read how Davis’ drama started I wasn’t surprised:

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So many reasons to love Cleveland Browns LB Scott Fujita.

As I said before, I totally understand why the NFL had to come down hard on the Saints regarding their bounty program. With over a dozen lawsuits filed against the NFL regarding injuries and medications used the league just can’t afford anymore liability. For these same reasons I understand that the players involved have to be punished too. Right now, it looks like  Scott Fujita, once a vocal leader of are the two that are being focused on the most.

It’s hard not to feel a lot of sympathy for Fujita who has been a model citizen both on and off the field for a very long time. I know that sounds cliche, but it’s true.  Fujita has been the kind of guy the NFL claims it wants to promote: intelligent, aware, thoughtful, respectful, eloquent, and charitable. And it wasn’t just sports sites that noticed what a great guy Fujita is. Check out this piece from Jezebel.com called “Reasons to Adore Saints linebacker Scott Fujita.”2) He lent his name to the National Equality March and has been outspoken about gay rights issues.

3) He supports an orphanage in New Orleans and started speaking out on gay rights in part because of his objection to laws limiting gay adoption. “What [such laws] are really saying is that the concern with one’s sexual orientation or one’s sexual preference outweighs what’s really important, and that’s finding safe homes for children,” he has said. “It’s also saying that we’d rather have kids bounce around from foster home to foster home throughout the course of their childhood, than end up in a permanent home.”

4) He’s active on behalf breast cancer awareness (his mother is a two-time survivor), filming PSAs for Susan G. Komen New Orleans Race for the Cure and wearing a pink hat during interviews.

5) He’s not afraid to speak up for his beliefs in a respectful, reasoned way. “People tell me, hey, that’s pretty courageous. You come out in favor of gay rights. I don’t think it’s that courageous,” he told The Times. “I think I have an opinion, that I wish was shared by everybody, but I honestly believe that it’s shared by more [football players] than we know because a lot of people just won’t speak out about it.”

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Bounties may be fairly common, but Gregg Williams' record is proof that they do not necessarily make defenses better. I wonder how much they will be missed.

So much has been written on the New Orleans Saints and Gregg Williams and their apparent bounty system already. It’s crazy how fast the internet pushes out opinions. Typically the same ones: most writers’ columns are either outraged about the bounty system or outraged about the outrage.  Either you’re appalled that this kind of thing goes on or you can’t believe how naive people are to believe that this kind of thing doesn’t go on.

As you know, I’m always a few days late with my thoughts because I hate being redundant and I also like to think about what I think. In this case, I understand both sides of the issue but I’m stuck on one thing that’s more important to me than how folks feel about bounties:

With every passing day it seems that Goodell is moving ahead with his new version of the NFL without waiting for everyone else to catch up.

As players, coaches, and diehard fans, we are not yet ready for Goodell’s kinder, gentler league. In fact, we don’t even know what it would look like in practice. The thought of players approaching the game with any lesser degree of fury just feels like the creation of a sport we want no parts of. And players and coaches are eager to look for ways to keep the sport closer to its roots. That mentality will take time to change.

Especially when the league is insistent upon portraying it as a “culture change” rather than what it is: a revamping of the game itself. And that’s why a Coach like Gregg Williams can run bounty programs across multiple teams over several years without any eyebrows outside of the organizations in question being raised.

If it’s not clear to you yet, please understand that the NFL has NO CHOICE but to re-position the NFL as a game that is violent but not malicious. A game where players say  ”I want to stop the play not stop a career”  which for most of us loyal football watchers is a distinction without much of a difference. Still, I don’t question the need for the NFL to try to create a stronger boundary there. The lawsuits against the NFL by former players and their families are racking up. There are over a dozen lawsuits in play currently and over 300 players involved. The public hasn’t really gotten a grasp of the fact that all of these lawsuits have been running without any decisions handed down. That means the NFL has no idea what the end result will be and the impact that it all will have on this country’s favorite sport.

In the meantime, Commissioner Goodell is scrambling to make the NFL something that it’s never been before. And again I understand the need for change but what I question is the mad dash speed at which its taking place. I think the league might need some sort of “No player or coach left behind” program.

A while back when I wrote about illegal hits in the NFL I think I used an analogy about lunch at work. So I’m going to stick with that analogy but change it a bit. I want to make an important point about official rules vs. unwritten rules.

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Even the fabulously wealthy Tom Brady gets his illegal stream on.

I’m not saying I would ever, ever, ever stream sports online. But I totally understand why people like Tom Brady do it. Whether you’re watching the Super bowl in Costa Rica like Brady did or  you’re a helpless victim of the NFL’s notorious blackout rules, or you just want to see the damn Sixers play the Heat and you don’t have Philadelphia CSN, live streaming sports can be key to the plugged-in sports lovers experience.

For bloggers like myself live streams can be key to being able to speak to the sport with authority. We don’t get free game film from the NFL or NBA etc. I personally rely on NFL game rewind to make sure I saw what I thought I saw, or to get caught up on a team before I write about them. In a perfect world I’d have satellite TV and could DVR games using NFL ticket. But guess what? I can’t get a satellite where I live, I have to have cable. And the NFL has an exclusive deal with DirectTV. My cable provider is Comcast.

Obviously SOPA and PIPA and ACTA and other legislation have really put “piracy” on the map again. So now the government has seized about 16 sites that stream live sports. More have popped up already but I can imagine the government is going to go all Whack-A-Mole here (at least for a little while). I can only hope for the sake of sports fans everywhere that this is like every other government crack down—they send a message for a while and then realize there’s no way they can possibly keep up with the internet’s steady-moving targets.

I wish that sports leagues (and record companies for that matter) would just get with the times. Nobody wants to pay $10 for a shitty cd with two good songs on it. And, nobody wants to pay 2389042038 to buy NFL ticket or 2389042038 to go to games + concessions + parking (not to mention traffic headaches in many areas of the country). Sometimes you just want to catch a good game without all the hassle and expense, and as long as ticket prices and cable prices are sky fucking high that’s not going to change.

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