While it might sound trite, it really isn't.
The note was simple: “Some of you may or may not know Hank Smith was involved in a criminal action that has resulted in his arrest. If you wish to research it, please do, but based on the facts we have, his team has been suspended and locked.”
One of the leagues I play in is run by an old law enforcement source of mine. My cousin, a buddy who now lives in Hendersonville and myself, I believe, are the only civilians in the league.
That's when it hit me Thursday morning that the matters involving Peterson and Rice are not really football issues, they are human issues.
Humans do terrible things, even to the people they are supposed to love, whether it is leaving a child bloody, bruised and scarred from what was supposed to be a disciplinary spanking, beating your soulmate or reportedly firing shots at those who were in your brotherhood like Smith, the guy in our fantasy football league, was alleged to have done Tuesday night.
The issues involving Rice and Peterson have been all the buzz on sports talk radio, measuring what the NFL has and hasn't done, measuring players against players.
Like any profession in life you have the bad, the good and those somewhere in the middle. We read stories every day of the bad people do who aren't involved in sports. The popularity of sports, particularly the wildly successful NFL, magnifies these misdeeds to a point that it rips the mask off some, makes others appear much larger than life and often forgets the ones who go out and play the game and are just thankful to be playing for a sizable paycheck that many will never see.
The saga of Aaron Hernandez is another story of how somehow who seemingly had it all just blew it.
I look at troubled Florida State University quarterback Jameis Winston. He is a stellar athlete, but an immature soul who could have a remarkable career ahead of him, but continues to find new ways to get in trouble. He's a liability before he even gets a chance at the NFL, if he even makes it that far.
None of this has anything to do with football. It's all about life. Hernandez could have easily been an accountant. Winston could have been an attorney, while Peterson and Rice could have been market researchers or authors.
As a football fan I've been known to put players on a pedestal. I don't any more. That hero worship is gone for me and now I look for every day heroes, people I respect, people I learn from, people who respect me back.
Many of these people are family — my long departed grandmother, my mother who raised me by herself since my dad died when I was 15. These are the kind of people I try to learn from — friends and family, perhaps a few news sources, but not athletes any more.
I have seen this hero worship turn sour on the pages of rrspin and have seen people go into a rage of denial. How could a minister be charged with allegedly taking advantage of a minor? How could a man so nice and living in an affluent part of Weldon reportedly be a major player in the cocaine trade. The answer is simple — because they are human.
Charles Barkley has been more right than wrong throughout his career and in retirement as he argues athletes shouldn't be looked upon as role models. Unfortunately, they are, but unless they make a compelling case as to why they should be role models — Jackie Robinson and Lou Gehrig come immediately to mind — we should look elsewhere for our role models or simply find the will within ourselves to be our own role models.
All human beings are flawed, even the 1,600 players in the NFL, which, to me, makes it a human issue and not a football issue.
That my moment of clarity came through a simple game of fantasy football doesn't make it trite, it just brings it closer to home — Lance Martin
