SCOTT on:

   NFL Lies

H ypocrisy was once again on display in the NFL Draft.

Over the past couple years, the NFL and its teams have talked until they’re blue in the face about how important character is. How character creates champions. How character is as important as speed or footwork or arm strength when evaluating players.

What a load of crap.

Andre Smith, B.J. Raji, Percy Harvin, Brandon Pettigrew and Vonte Davis all had one character issue or another heading into the draft and each of them still went in the first round, largely where they had been predicted to go before their character red flags went up.

NFL teams talk about character, but their actions prove it’s just talk.

Character, by and large, doesn’t matter to NFL teams. Speed, size, strength, ability – that’s what matters. You smoke a little dope, you’ve got some DUIs, you don’t pay attention to your coaches, you’re high maintenance, big deal.

Can you play?

That’s the only question that matters to the majority of NFL teams.

Who falls on Draft Day?

More often than not, it ends up being guys like James Laurinaitis and Michael Johnson, great character guys around who other questions are asked. Is Laurinaitis athletic enough? Is Johnson nasty enough? That they have great character doesn’t matter to the teams drafting them any more than a bad character player’s bad character matters.

That NFL teams don’t care about the character of their employees doesn’t bother me. Pro sports, for the most part, have never been for nice guys or good guys. What bothers me is that the NFL continues to promote the idea that character matters and so many fans actually buy it.

When it comes to character, NFL teams are the cheating husband who continually tells his wife he loves her, yet comes home twice a week at 1 AM with lipstick on his collar. But he tells her he’s faithful when he walks in the door with his shirt untucked and she buys it because she wants to believe him.

NFL fans are the wife. Fans love the NFL and want to believe the lies it tells them. Fans want to believe it’s better, cleaner, purer than it is. Fans want to believe character matters to these teams.

We love the NFL. It’s great. That’s ok.

But our love for the NFL is trending toward blind love and that can be dangerous.

Blind love can make you do crazy things and overlook things in others you shouldn’t. We shouldn’t overlook the extraordinary amount of creeps, jerks, criminals and degenerates playing in the NFL and we shouldn’t overlook the obvious lie the NFL tells us about wanting players with character each year.

NFL lies
I hope you mean it
How Michael Jordan is like Dolly Parton
Too much of a good thing
Why the NFL Draft is harder than it should be
Break free from the bracket
The story of the year
What Brett Favre's return means
Ug-a
Kimbo Slice
Why isn't college baseball more popular?
Faulty memory.
P.T. Screwed by FSU.
UGA as Cinderella?
Atlanta, a world class city.
UFC excitement.
Bobby Petrino is Razortrash .
LSU in the BCS.
Watching football? There's no place like home.
Black Coaches and Administrators' poisonous report.
Tebow strikes fear in defenses.
Hating on Barry Bonds.
Nick Saban, the snake.
Bipolar Brett Favre.
College basketball is full of March badness.
The tournament is just madness.
UAB vs. UAT.
The BCS works.
Steroids and Mark McGwire.
The legacy of Dominique.