Collier: Uncovering some bare facts in NFL
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Before it gets lost in the holiday hustle and bustle, especially the bustle because, well, I still don't know what that means, we should issue our formal appreciation to Detroit Lions assistant coach Joe Cullen for making the NFL police blotter interesting again.
Tired of the same old domestic abuse, weapons charges, and DUIs?
I thought so.
Well, Cullen this season introduced nude driving to the mix, for which he was ticketed in Dearborn. Mich., after a Wendy's drive-thru attendant took his order for a No. 1 combo but wound up thinking, "Whoa; you want fries with that?" She proceeded to phone authorities. They issued a citation for, "driving on a public street without any clothes on," adding parenthetically, "NUDE."
So that's the crime, I guess. Public street 'n' all.
Private drive? You're good to go, NUDE or no. Presumably.
Somewhere, Chico Lind is smiling.
It was the former Pirates second baseman, you'll recall, who pioneered the nude-driving concept 10 years ago in Tampa, Fla. It hadn't been perfected yet. Chico got pulled over on suspicion of DUI, but authorities inspecting his Range Rover found cocaine and an extreme lack of pants. Police said they were unable to perform a field sobriety test due to this same extreme lack of pants.
Don't get any ideas.
In any case, The Washington Post this week went to the trouble of counting the number of arrests of NFL players, which didn't include Cullen, and came up with at least 41 arrests involving 35 athletes, a number of them non-Bengals.
Unfortunately for your entertainment dollar, few were terribly interesting. Certainly, there has been nothing this year to rival the notorious Minnesota Vikings Love Boat party of Oct. 2005, the media reports of which are surely being made into the alleged plot of various adult videos coast to coast.
Again, don't get any ideas.
Still, Tank Johnson of the Chicago Bears has put unusually nonsensical seasons back-to-back, leading all the way to the kind of nonsensical tragedy that at times must have seemed inevitable. The starting nose tackle on a team with surprisingly Super aspirations, on parole from a 2005 weapons charge, was arrested on aggravated assault charges Feb. 12. Those charges eventually were dropped, but Dec. 14, a raid on Johnson's home turned up a cache of weapons for which no permits existed.
Early the next morning, Johnson's friend and bodyguard, William B. Posey, was shot and killed at bar on Chicago's North Side. Johnson was in the bar at the time.
I probably don't have the sequence right, but why would a 300-pound defensive tackle acquire a .44 magnum Smith & Wesson revolver, a .45 caliber handgun, a .50 caliber Desert Eagle handgun, and two assault rifles, then think, "Ya know what I need? A bodyguard."
No definitive explanation for any of Johnson's troubles have emerged with the Post's cursory study, or for why someone like Cincinnati's Chris Henry could be arrested five times in little more than a year, but NFL apologists pointed out correctly that 35 perps among 2,000 players is less than 2 percent of a league that is much thicker with productive citizens and, often enough, models of community and charitable spirit. Some among the league's amateur sociologists theorized that young people from impoverished backgrounds sometimes make a harsh transition to sudden wealth, and that erratic behaviors are bound to ensue.
Moreover, not all arrests are created equal. As we've noted before in this space, the arrest of Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Dhani Jones in March for failure to stop dancing on a Miami Street was worthy of absolution inasmuch as to do the same if your team had just rid itself of Terrell Owens.
Santonio Holmes, the Steelers' rookie of the year, had a similar disagreement with Miami police, and charges of domestic abuse resulting from a second arrest recently were dropped. Still, Holmes needs a touchdown tomorrow against Baltimore or next week in Cincinnati to be able to say his rookie year included more touchdowns than arrests.
Few other patterns have emerged, or at least none that can be explained. Every team in the Steelers' division, the AFC North, had a least one arrest this year, but none of the teams in the NFC South (New Orleans, Atlanta, Carolina, and Tampa Bay) had a single arrest. Linebackers, defensive backs, and wide receivers were far more likely to be arrested than players at other positions, but it still wouldn't be hard to put together an All-Miranda Team, given that every position was represented on the rap sheet except center and quarterback.
No quarterbacks, huh? Gee I wonder if that's because ... naw.
Yesterday, Tank Johnson was held on $100,000 bond and ordered to 24-hour home confinement. Cook County Judge John J. Moran told Johnson he can leave his home to travel to work (he'll be back with the Bears for next week's final regular-season game), but that someone else must drive him.
"Absolutely no stops," Moran said. "Not for a drink, not for a sandwich, not even for a drive-thru."
No, especially not a drive-thru.
First Published December 23, 2006 12:00 am
