The Dallas Cowboys could be without their All-Pro kick returner from 2024 when they travel to Philadelphia to take on the Super Bowl champion Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field on September 4.
KaVonte Turpin, who led the entire NFL in kickoff return yardage last season, at 33.5 yards per game (!), was caught going too fast on the highway, as well — 97 mph in a 70 mph zone — and also in possession of less than two ounces of marijuana, when he was pulled over in Allen, 20 miles north of Dallas, on Sunday.
Turpin, who goes 5'9" and 153 pounds (reminiscent of Eddie Bell of the Jets in the days of yore) and runs a 4.31 in the 40-yard dash, was expelled from TCU halfway through his senior year (would he have been expelled from, say, Cal or Rutgers?) due to two domestic violence charges (but not even one, let alone two, domestic violence convictions — making one wonder why the NFLPA is not demanding that an "innocent until proven guilty" clause be added to any 18-game regular-season schedule proposal that the owners so dreadfully want), and then spent three years in the football wilderness (spring leagues that most people haven't even heard of) until 2022, when he signed with Dallas.
In his three seasons with the Cowboys, Turpin has rushed for 219 yards and 1 touchdown, has had 556 yards and 5 touchdowns receiving, has returned 60 punts for 570 yards and a touchdown, and 58 kickoffs for 1.704 yards and a score.
Not bad for an undrafted rookie!
Of course the "usual suspects," filled with envy over the five rings Dallas has won, are making big-time schadenfreude out of this tempest in a teapot, trying to look down on "America's Team" morally — but Roger Goodell isn't buying it, at least not for now.
And not for nothing, but didn't Babe Ruth drink like a fish during the heart of Prohibition? Just like they talk about the "perjury trap" on Perry Mason, so there is a "hypocrisy trap" when it comes to matters like drugs vs. alcohol (see Chris Mullin's alcoholism vis-a-vis Dwight Gooden's concomitant struggles with cocaine in the '80s).
So it is long since past time for sports and law enforcement to become separate — just like for church and state to be separate (even though scores of millions of Americans disagree).
Even Rob Manfred has come around to this way of thinking, reinstating both Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson from their lifetime bans. (Rose is eligible to be enshrined in Cooperstown in 2027, Jackson in 2028. No one is expecting either of them not to get in.)
Back in the late '70s, jokes about the Cowboys as "South America's Team" were all over the place, due to many players on the team having been arrested on cocaine-possession charges.
If the criminal justice system wants to send Turpin and similar miscreants to jail (both domestic violence and gun possession are Class B misdemeanors in Texas), that's their prerogative — not the NFL's.
But if the NFL decides to deprive Turpin et al their right to earn a living, they will be accused of racism — big time — and justifiably so.
The NFL season — even the preseason — cannot begin soon enough.
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