Tuesday, June 11, 2019
Justice Not Swift For Tyreek Hill
The "speedy trial clause" of the Sixth Amendment does just that: it gives the accused the right to a speedy trial.
Roger Goodell must have cut class the day that was taught when he was in like the seventh grade, since Goodell seems to be in no rush to rule on what penalty, if any, Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill will receive — no pun intended — for going overboard in disciplining his 3-year-old son.
Since Hill broke the kid's arm, it can be said that he went so far overboard that he earned a better number in the broad jump than he would have at the 2016 combine, to which he had not been invited, probably because he ended his college career at unheralded West Alabama after having been kicked off the Oklahoma State football team for beating up and attempting to strangle his girlfriend — the same girlfriend who is the mother of the child, and has stuck with him ever since. Guess you don't have to go to Sweden to witness a case of Stockholm Syndrome.
It is altogether possible that Goodell is hoping for a Ray Rice redux: Rice, after being caught on camera playing "the knockout game" with his wife in an elevator in Atlantic City, voluntarily "retired" from pro football (we have moved on big time from the days when Elevator Action was a video game, folks). That would make things a lot easier for Goodell — but that is highly unlikely, because Hill will be a free agent in March, and will be in line for a huge payday, even with this scandal.
The Adrian Peterson saga might offer some insight as to what may lie ahead for Hill: Peterson was suspended after one game of the 2014 season (and for the remainder of that season, as it turned out), also for going too far in disciplining his son, in his case a 4-year-old — unintentionally kicking up a sectional debate — North vs. South — rather than a racial debate — white vs. black — about appropriate methods of disciplining children — particularly boys, it seems.
Conspiracy theorists are speculating that the longer the Johnson County (Kansas) prosecutor's office kicks the can down the road in Hill's case, the more likely the Chiefs will continue to abrogate another constitutional principle — namely, that a person is to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, which the Chiefs are doing by refusing to back down from their decision to bar Hill indefinitely from all team activities "until more is known." And sooner or later Goodell will have to step in and place Hill on its "Commissioner Exempt List," requiring the Chiefs to pay Hill $1,965,000 for 2019 even if he doesn't play therein.
"Until more is known"? Talk about weasel words — but the Chiefs having drafted Tyreek Hill clone Mecole Hardman in the second round in the 2019 draft was anything but a weasel move.
Ezekiel Elliott didn't get to be presumed innocent until proven guilty either: he was suspended for six games in 2017 despite never having even been charged with a crime, let alone convicted of one, costing the Cowboys a playoff berth that season.
Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, where they have no horse in this race, on WPEN — 97.5 The Fanatic — Anthony Gargano lit into Hill big time the other day, going so far as to challenge Hill to a fight. Gargano, who started his career writing for the New York Post, moved to Philly when he couldn't make it in the Big Apple — as did Stephen A. Smith, who now resides in a South Jersey exurb of Philly after having been born in the Bronx and growing up in Hollis, Queens, the second closest neighborhood in that borough to Belmont Racetrack (Queens Village being the closest).
Maybe it's true what W.C. Fields said about Philadelphia?
To paraphrase what Captain Kirk said to Balok in the 1966 Star Trek episode "The Corbomite Maneuver":
If the NFL is going to destroy Tyreek Hill's career, then destroy it now. We grow annoyed at their foolishness.