He's obviously a good guy
That's absurd. He's not "obviously a good guy." What in god's name would make you think that sucker punching a player on the opposing team, taunting or not (and Blount did PLENTY of taunting--publicly, I might add--prior to the game) makes it obvious that someone is a "good guy?"
That's right, good. Flip out on the internet. Let the scorn course through you.
He started crying--he was repentant. People have different backgrounds and have learned to respond to adversity in different ways. Just because he did something that average, every-day"white bread" suburban people would never do, he becomes an object of scorn and derision. We all make mistakes. It just so happens that the guys who follow football and run football are especially intolerant about this sort of thing.
Tony Skinn from GMU punched a guy in the balls. He was a senior, too. He got suspended one game. Practically everything about they're situations are comprable--the only signifiant difference between the two is the sports themselves, and what kind of people follow them and run them.
I have a friend who was involved in a similar incident. He was at a bar with another friend of mine, a smaller guy who likes to dress....oddly. At this bar, some guys from a sports team from my old school kind of ganged up on my smaller friend, pushing him around, knocking his drink out of his hand, throwing homophobic slurs at him...my other friend (the one not being picked on) wasn't around it, so he couldn't do anything to stop it.
The bouncers saw it and threw my one friend out, my other friend left with him.
then, about an hour later (roughly 2am), my other smaller friend left to go home while my larger, tougher friend went to a popular late night food spot. While in line, two of the guys that were picking on my smaller friend were directly behind my larger friend. They were saying how its"a good thing that (homophobic slur) got kicked out of the bar, because if he would've been there another 5 mins they would've beaten the crap out of him. My bigger friend turned around and asked these guys why they would do that. They respond that it was because he was a (homophobic slur), and they do the same thing to you (meaning my bigger friend) if he had a problem with it.
Turns out he did have a problem with that. He threw one single punch at the larger of the two guys.
That punch broke the kid's jaw in two places, the guy spent months with his mouth wired shut.
My friend, he was a student teacher at the time. The other guy pressed charges. He lost his student teaching position, he was expelled from school, he was put on 3 years probation (could not leave the county to pursue another teaching position), and he had a felony on his record, so he had no shot at getting in another program. He pours concrete now.
Could he have acted differently? Sure. Could he have been more prudent? Yes. Did he deserve to lose his dream because of 30 seconds of ill advised (but in my mind, very justified) behavior and one unfortunate (but well placed) punch? I don't think so.
I think a year suspended was a little extreme. There shouldn't be no action taken, but a year? pretty extreme.
Topic: LeGarrette Blount's Blunder (merged) (Read 11986 times)