People do bad things all the time. But “bad” is a relative term. There may be something I consider bad that you don’t (hopefully punching a women in the face hard enough to break bones isn’t one of them).
We live in a country that has laws and a reasonably clear list of consequences for when those laws are broken. But in professional football (and some other places, but especially professional football), there seems to be a feeling that the legal punishments aren’t enough (whether it’s domestic abuse or smoking something legal in a state in which it’s legal) and that we have to look at this as a privilege and not a right.
We live in America, the land of freedom – zombie apocalypse or not, I can stockpile all the assault rifles I want if I fill out the right form! You can’t take away our rights!
But you can turn rights into privileges and then take those away…
Which brings up an interesting question when deciding if Joe Mixon should be allowed to play in the NFL or even participate in the combine.
Other football players have done bad things in the past. Michael Vick came back, but Ray Rice didn’t. Adrian Peterson came back and LeGarrette Blount is all good, but we question Joe Mixon.
So do we have a clearly-defined, unwritten hierarchy of what we can to do women, children, men, and dogs?
It’s like we use laws as the lowest common denominator and then set a higher bar on punishment when someone who breaks a law wants to do something really cool, like playing in the NFL. I mean, no one ever says, “I don’t want that guy scraping dog sh!t off the hot blacktop after what he did! It’s a privilege, not a right!”
When it comes to playing football, isn’t Vontaze Burfict a bigger danger that Ray Rice? Doesn’t Gregg Williams pose a more immediate threat to NFL players than Joe Mixon?
I’m withholding my opinions on this (other than the blatantly obvious stance that what Joe Mixon did is absolutely not ok) to raise questions and hear a (hopefully) reasonable (at least by internet standards) exchange of ideas. Use the comments if you have a thought.