Pittsburgh PG Story on Santonio Holmes: Is it Fair?

Not at all - the story makes the point that the young man had a troubled past prior to his arrests this year. You could almost predict the arrests based on his past, according to the story.

The charm school tutor was hired to make Holmes palatable to whichever organization drafted him. Translation - to make him more presentable to the ticket buyers of that franchise.

This young man hasn't played a single down of professional football yet, and you're trying to tell me that the decisions he makes in bed with his girlfriend are worthy of public investigation and comment by that region's newspaper of record?

 

More to the point -- please I still fail to see any correlation between having a child out of wedlock and being a bad person or bad citizen or criminal, well, unless your name is Jerry Falwell, or apparently ninety-nine 90. Plenty of guys I know have had multiple kids out of wedlock yet somehow aren't criminals and even pay their taxes and occassionally go to church.

This kid's real "pattern" of bad behavior before this latest and most serious problem -- the domestic violence -- is two minor brushes with the law, one which was apparently thrown out of court because he didn't do anything but be in the wrong place at the wrong time and a second one in Miami, where it sounds like he basically is guilty of nothing more than hurting a police officer's feelings. I'd argue that both of these minor arrests were, at least in part if not largely, because of his high profile and who he was.

Again, it is not a good start for the kid, he needs to get his act together, but this doesn't sound to me like Lawrence Phillips or Christian Peter we are talking about either.

 

Yes.

If someone had been elected to the city council, to use one of your analogies, but hadn't yet officially begun his duties, and the same circumstances were in place, would that not be worthy of investigation? And I submit the Steelers' top draft choice is every bit as much of interest to the public as a city councilman, probably more.

And no, the idea of Herock's sessions were not to make the player presentable to ticket buyers. It was to make Holmes more palatable to teams so they would be more receptive to drafting him earlier and therefore paying him more money.

 

I'm only trying to make the point that we maintain at least two double standards in our business. With the first, we hold athletes to standards that we don't apply to more important members of the community, like schoolteachers or priests or librarians. This may or may not be a function of giving readers what we think they want, as opposed to what they actually need. The second, very much the subtext in this piece, is that we hold black athletes to a completely different set of standards than those we apply to white athletes.

 

da man:

I think you have it right. The Steelers didn't hire Herock; Holmes and/or his agent did. And that makes me all the more concerned that Herock ran his mouth so willingly/candidly about one of his clients.

Even if you don't think there is a "professional" responsibility here to keep quiet, Herock needs to shut his yap so that he can continue to have potential draftees and their agents hire him for his "professional services". That's called enlightened self-interest on Mr. Herock's part.

Were I an agent or a player looking for such counseling services now, I'd be very suspicious about dealing with Mr. Herock and his firm because I'd wonder when - not if - all of my "stuff" would be aired out in the papers.