MY NFL Editorial

  VS.  

    Tonight is the first game of the 2013 NFL season ... cousin Dean's Ravens against my Broncos. I think we will edge them ~ about 24-21. Should be a good game. Come'on Peyton, kick some butt !!

    Now, let me climb gingerly up onto my soapbox ...

                                                                 ... and off I go !!!

    Thursday's NFL opener between the Baltimore Ravens and Denver Broncos launches Roger Goodell's eighth season as commissioner — it features an arrest rate of more than one per week over that time period. Since the Super Bowl on Feb. 3, NFL players have been arrested or charged with crimes at least 37 times, including 10 players accused of driving drunk and a murder indictment for ex-New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez.

    In Goodell's seven years on the job, NFL players have been arrested or charged with crimes at least 395 times, including:

    107 drunken-driving arrests

      43 domestic-abuse cases

      34 cases involving guns 

      84 cases involving fighting or disorderly conduct 

                 (usually at bars or nightclubs late at night)

    I think this is inevitable ... because you are giving very young men (many times from an extremely poor background) incredibly obscene amounts of money and huge amounts of adulation ... being told constantly "how great and extraordinary" they are. This is the same reason that most lottery winners are broke within 5 years (or less). They have no idea how to handle the money and attention and they give in to "stupid that they haven't used yet". If you have had nothing, or close to nothing most of your life and all-of-a-sudden ... boom! you are a millionaire  a couple of times over ... this would play tricks with any one's brain and/or conduct. I am not condoning what they do or the the fantasy-type lifestyles they lead. I mean ... seriously, what 23 year old needs a $4-$5 million dollar house. They're playing football from August to January and the rest of the year they're partying while trying to stay in shape for the following year. The people who live in their houses are merely hangers-on and pseudo-friends. The thing that really makes me feel sorry for them is their quest for trophy wives ... models and movie stars and singers ... who are as emotionally bankrupt as they are. Don't get me wrong, beauty is nice ... but it is not the basis for a happy, meaningful, lasting relationship. But ... they'll be 45, crippled and broke before they figure that out. There are a lot of broke former players out there. There are a few who invested well, got other careers and are happily married (usually not to a model/singer/movie star) ... but I fear they are exceptions.