Awesome piece as always. Keep getting the message out.....

Dear Dave, Thanks for all your great articles. I read and enjoy them all and agree with most. As to this one above, you are so right, but in these days of economic concern, I guess everyone is looking for something outside themselves to enjoy and TV sure does the trick, especially sports and since the NCAA basketball and college and pro football are over, I am barely turning on the TV (I don't have cable but would not have watched the draft). I get a lot of book reading done this time of year once I finish the daily paper. But there are too many people that only watch TV or their computer and need this kind of nonsense to get them through their days. By the way, I just finished Michael Lewis' newest book on football and I will never watch a game the same again. And when I learned the it was actually a true story, I was aghast and delighted. I now am going to read all of his books. Enough of this prattle, baseball is on the radio and Vince Scully's voice will get me through the warmth of the summer and then football starts again. Oh, I am turning 75 in a month or so and still enjoy most sports, as a spectator and having TV is a joy since I used to listen to USC football on Saturdays on the radio, if you can imagine, as I worked out on the tennis court trying to beat the backboard. We had a portable radio, with tubes, that weighed a ton that I carted to the high school. Keep on with your great articles and thanks again for your concerns.

Dave:

Thanks for bring a blast of reality to the NFL meat market. Players are human beings

chas

Character concerns?? Too bad we didn't apply that criterion in the last two presidential elections!

For the past few years, since I've found out about these ritual humiliations players have to undergo in order to be drafted, I've harbored a little fantasy. It goes like this: one or more of the very top draft prospects refuses to play along. Oh, they do the normal stuff like run, throw, catch, and bench press for the scouts, but that's it. None of the other creepy slave auction inspection bullshit that's now become the norm.

I know this is only a fantasy, because any player who refused to play along would most certainly cost himself a bunch of money. But it could happen if a handful of top players came together and simply said, "No. Take it or leave it".

Anybody but me notice the first 3 draft picks were white even though the 2 players considered best in the draft were black? This supposedly had to do with "injury concerns" and "character concerns". Right! ... What hath Roger Goodell wrought?

While football is not my thing (due in no small part to injuries suffered playing the sport in my formative years,) I can appreciate it and respect the young men and women who play the game. As a teacher of 6th graders in Richmond (CA) I was struck by the point you made about teams passing on players due to "character concerns," a coded phrase if I've ever heard one. I really enjoyed What's My Name, Fool? and am looking forward to obtaining Terrordome from my local library.

Gotta love theew NFL, where "character" suddenly has become an issue. Ten years ago players were practically snorting the yard lines, partying every night and wasting their multi-million dollar contracts and nobody seemed to care. Now a guy overcomes growing up in gang territory with a broken and dvided home but smokes some leaf and suddenly he's got "character issues".

Look I have my issues with drug use of any kind, but come on. A few years back the joke was if they passed on every player who had a rap sheet the first round would be a wash, now suddenly they have a conscience. Whatever.

Thanks Dave for another excellent article. As an African American each time the NFL Draft rolls around I get images in my mind of a Digital slave ship docking on the ESPN channel on the tube. There they are the new bloods being poked and prodded as if they're horses or pet poodles in some sort of surreal Dog Show.

I agree with another poster that they throw their hands up when one 21 yr old kid has ONE scrap with the law...hell do we have a number high enough to see how many times Hollywood stars and starlets screw up merely for publicity or boredom? And as for the integrity issue...I wish the same would apply to anyone in the Bush administration. If there was a draft for The White House does folks wouldn't be invited to clean the combine much less attend it.

dave,
i'm sorry that you've gotten so many positive responses to this column because it was a train wreck. it is unfocused and sloppy; it lumps together legitimate concerns about the way teams delve into the lives of prospective players with your own issues regarding racism and fantasy football. it borders on irresponsible to throw all these things together, and while some of your concerns are not necessarily ridiculous, you have to accept the fact that taking a stance like this leads people like "Conspiracy Brother" to spout absolutely baseless claims like the one he has written above. (you can't claim that not taking darren mcfadden first is racist unless you first prove that the dolphins needed him more than an offensive lineman or the rams a defensive lineman or the falcons a quarterback.) honestly, taking such a stance doesn't help anything, nor does the seemingly endless flow of positive reinforcement that you seem to receive.

I never wrote that not taking McFadden or Dorsey was racist, you wrote that. I merely stated that the reasons given for not taking them higher were "character and injury" concerns, not team needs, not lack of ability. All 3 teams have myriad needs and could use players at any number of positions. Why not take the best player at a position of need? I just find it curious that what are now commonly held debates about player's character adversely affect African American athletes more than others. Falcons owner Arthur Blank made it clear Matt Ryan's "character" had much to do with his selection, despite questions about his ability and questions about his worthiness to be the 3rd pick in the draft.
Racism implies intent, which I can't and didn't judge (but you did). However, the effect of judging the nebulous quality of character is to diminish black athletes while elevating white athletes.

Two already and two on the way? And some athletes only give out autographs.

My comment was directed as Dave for, what I felt to be, a sloppy column. If you feel that your comment does not imply that racism was a deciding factor for the places McFadden and Dorsey went in the draft than you need to learn to write better because that implication is clear. On top of that, your last line, "what hath roger goddell wrought," clearly implies that there is a league-wide mandate that inspires racism.

As well, in your response to me, you again imply this, but the truth is it doesn't bother me that you think I'm wrong about your comment. The NFL may very well be racist in the ways that your comments suggest, but you didn't prove your point and that does bother me. If you think it was racist that McFadden went fourth explain to me why the Dolphins should have taken him. Maybe explain to me why he's better than Ronnie Brown, for example. Instead, you would seemingly rather rely on anecdotal reasoning to explain what is a very muddled point.

But, I will ask you this: if "character" never helps black athletes and only helps white ones, how do explain how long Byron Leftwich hung on with the Jaguars even though they had the clearly more talented David Garrard on the bench or splitting time? At some point you, and people who chose to argue as you do, will realize that grand sweeping statements never work. If you think something racist has happened now with this draft prove it through argument. Don't ask rhetorical questions like "Why not take the best player at a position of need?" as you have above. Can't you understand that if you don't show why the teams that passed on McFadden needed him more than the choices they made your argument is faulty?

Last year as I watched the combine I got a bad feeling...and then they got to the weigh in and there it was. I'd seen the scene before...in the movie Mandingo starring Ken Norton. I was so taken aback that I still havent fully recovered from it.