Mike Freeman... a couple paragraphs in and I figured it was either him or Gregg Doyel. CBSsports.com in general is just a terrible website for sports. They cling to shitty writers like Freeman and Doyel, because their hyperbole generates idiotic controversy and almost guarantees site traffic. As for the article, itself, what can you really say? I thought its idiocy was highlighted in the middle: So he criticizes the Giants' recent signings by comparing them to our long moral tradition, only to list examples that invalidate that argument. The bolded part is what I really take exception to. How do you say that when the franchise's best and most revered player was a known cokehead who had a shitload of a personal problems. The fact is, all NFL teams evaluate players by their potential to make the team successful. Every single moral criteria that Freeman is referring to (character, attitude, personality, etc.) have always been assessed in terms of their impact on the team's success. That's it. Sure, you see some teams with much looser standards than others, but that's just because their owners/GM's have a different interpretation of how bad a personality is too bad a personality (eg: Jerry Jones took on TO/Pacman/Tank because he believed their character would be outweighed by their talent and ability). NFL teams are obligated to dissociate with criminals and that's it. When those players have paid their penalty to society, all teams consider them potential options. No team is above this reality. Pretending that the league has ever been at this ideal moral plane is just ignorant.
