Rooting for athletes vs. personal feelings: Where do you draw the line?

It doesn't matter how much I like/enjoy watching any pro athlete, I wouldn't suggest kids use 99.9 percent of them as role models.

 

Baseball Adam Jones or "make it rain" Adam Jones?

 

I root for the city and the teams associated with it.

I am also much happier when I get to cheer for players like Polamalu, Ward, Farrior and Woodley than Roethlisberger, Porter and Harrison (who has more steroid red-flags surrounding him than a Chinese parade).

The Vick case, though, has shown me that I am OK with a guy coming back once he has paid his debt to society. The guy was in prison and lost tens of millions of dollars. What else do you want from this guy? I really don't want a society where we are cutting people's hands off in the streets.

 

Just a tiny bit of hyperbole there?

Nobody is asking for Vick to be punished more in that way. Hell, I even understand Eagles fans rooting for him because he helps their team. That is pretty much what I am stuck doing with Roethlisberger. But to root for him as an individual? That's what I didn't get.

Forget the steroids with Harrison. He is a violent person off the field as well as on. He has had anger management issues for years and he was charged with assaulting his girlfriend. He only got away with that because she dropped the charges and there wasn't enough evidence without her. Hell of a football player, but not a good guy at all.

Roethlisberger and Vick raises a good question. Both were accused of ugly things. Put aside for a moment that Roethlisberger's is worse (at least in my opinion.) Do people think of Roethlisberger as having paid his debt because of the suspension? Or is part of the reason he is hated because he got away with it legally?

I guess I'm asking if Vick's crime is mitigated more than Roethlisberger's because he went to jail for it.

 

Harrison was released by two teams who really know what they are doing player deveolpent-wise, and then he becomes the Defensive M.V.P.?

It's like a guy not being good enough for the Pirates and then hitting .400 or smashing 50 home runs...

Oh.

 

Oh, I'm not saying you are wrong about the steroid thing, though the evidence is a little thin. To be fair, the guy is short for the position and his anger issues were a known fact by then, so that probably made them less willing to take a risk on him.

My point was that the off-field issues are far worse in my mind than steroid use.

 

Randy Moss will be welcomed back to Minnesota like the prodigal son.

 

I don't condone what Vick did. But he served a lot of time to pay his debt. Athletes kill people while driving drunk and get lesser sentences. I feel the same way about Plaxico Burress. What he did was wrong and stupid, but no way in hell did it merit the sentence he got.

 

I would like to go back in time to the day when Moss was traded to Oakland and tell Minnesota fans, "In 2010, you will be rooting for Brett Favre and Randy Moss." Their heads would have exploded.

I think at this point Fuad Reveiz could return and I'd be less surprised.

 

Glad we cleared that up.