Smooth Sailing for the NFL: Not Freakin' Likely

In his short tenure as the NFL Commishioner, Roger Goodell has had to deal with the ongoing legal problems of players such as Adam "Pacman" Jones, who runs to trouble as fast as the ghosts of the Pacman video game. When it came out that a Tennessee man paid for "lapdances" at a Nashville "gentlemen's club"recently, it was almost a surprise that Pacman was NOT involved. Chris Henry, Jones' former teammate at West Virginia and much of the Cincinnati Bengal franchise have similar problems.

This summer brought the revelation that Michael Vick of the Atlanta Falcons, one of the league's marquee players, was running a dogfighting ring in his home state of Virginia. Whoopi Goldberg, former Congressman J.C. Watts, Deion Sanders, or anyone else can try to excuse Vick's reprehensible behavior by claiming it's just part of Southern "culture" in the rural South, but that's just another example of the current plague on society of making excuses for just about anything.

Former NBA All-Star Charles Barkley (the last name is ironic isn't it?) put it best when he said that there is no excuse and "Vick needs to step up and be a man". Vick has had 3 years of college and made millions of dollars in his years in the NFL, plenty of time to rise above such idiocy. Besides, the thing no one seems to be considering is the gambling aspect of his behavior. Granted, it's not the worst part of this whole sordid tale, but an NFL player running any kind of gambling ring has to be troubling to the league. Say Vick lost $100,000 to his rival and the other guy offered to forgive the debt in exchange for shaving points or throwing a game?

Just when the Michael Vick saga was winding down a little, comes the first of the season and Kevin Everett of the Buffalo Bills suffered a life-threatening injury Sunday. Thankfully, the injury nows appears to be not as bad as first thought and the latest reports are encouraging, but still not the sort of news needed by a league still reeling from the aforementioned troubles.