In the latest case of “Athlete Privilege” a Louisiana district attorney chose not to prosecute two University of Alabama football players. His statement of explanation is absolutely mind-boggling.
Crimson Tide football players Cam Robinson and Laurence “Hootie” Jones were arrested for possession of marijuana AND weapons violations. The two men were arrested when a police officer smelled marijuana and approached the car seeing the pot and a gun in plain sight. There was another gun, which turned out to be stolen, under the passenger seat. Somehow, the district attorney cited a “lack of evidence” when choosing not to prosecute the case. I am not sure what you would call the marijuana and two firearms, again one of which was STOLEN. Call me naïve but that sounds like evidence to me.
The DA, and the meaning of those two letters is up for debate here, doubled down with this absolutely ridiculous statement. “I want to emphasize once again that the main reason I am doing this that I refuse to ruin the lives of two young men who spent their adolescent and teenage years working and sweating while we were all in the air conditioning.” What does that even mean?
I’ll tell you what it really means. If you are an athlete, you are immune to the laws of society. We have seen this before. The Stanford rapist gets a three month sentence. Jameis Winston doesn’t even get investigated for a rape allegation NOR prosecuted for blatant theft. Rapists get protected by coaches and/or law enforcement at Baylor, Vanderbilt, and Tennessee. A child molester was protected at Penn State. The list goes on and on and on and on…… Does anyone really believe that these two young men would be summarily excused for possession of a stolen weapon if they were not high profile athletes? Not a chance in the world. Right now, half of our country is going nuts over accessibility to guns and here we have our law enforcement choosing to ignore the theft of a firearm.
The disgusting part is that this DA states unabashedly that he is not prosecuting because they are athletes. AND nobody is batting an eye. Other than a few people like me who feel it necessary to point out the constant stream of raw sewage flowing through our sports entertainment, there is no outrage or outcry against these ridiculous decisions by the highest authorities in our judicial system.
So what happens now to these two criminals? Apparently, nothing as far as our judicial, or lack thereof, system is concerned. Somewhere they are laughing it up about how untouchable they are thanks to their football prowess. It is likely that both will indulge in similar behavior in the future because they have been taught that laws don’t apply to them. Of course Alabama head coach Nick Saban will be forced to make at least some token gesture of discipline but in the end he will spout on about how it is more important to salvage these young men’s future than to enforce laws or rules of behavior. As much as he would like to have Cam Robinson for the first game against Southern California, he will likely find it expedient to suspend both players for that game. And, since the second game is against cupcake Western Kentucky, he will probably suspend them for the second game as well. But I will be shocked if both are not active for the third game against Ole Miss. Saban may need them in that game.
I have been a huge sports fan for nearly my entire life which is why I write sports pieces for multiple web sites and publications. But, I have to admit that it is becoming harder by the day to care about the accomplishments of competitors involved in increasingly corrupt and poisonous sports entities. Unfortunately, there are very few areas of life where decency still exists and nobody seems to care. That is a sad commentary of just where we are as a species these days.
