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Since Monday, January 2, when Bills defensive back Damar Hamlin collapsed from cardiac arrest on ESPN’s national coverage, I have been unable to shake the notion that video is so potent that it renders a thousand descriptive words, including facts, irrelevant.
What would have happened to great Rutgers running back Ray Rice, had his NFL career with the Ravens not abruptly ended when video exposed him punching out his fiancée outside an Atlantic City casino-resort elevator?
During the 2014 offseason, a widely seen and shocking video was released, leading to Rice’s suspension and eventual release. He did not play again.
But would his career have lasted if this video did not exist? My guess: Yes.
Sunday on CBS, the Bengals take on the Bills in a playoff game. Joe Mixon is slated to start at running back for Cincinnati. It is exceedingly doubtful that Jim Nantz or Tony Romo will reference important details of Mixon’s career during the broadcast:
In 2014, as a prized recruit to Oklahoma, Mixon was suspended for one season after hitting a lady in a restaurant, breaking four bones in her face with what the Oklahoma media reported as a crushing right hook that knocked her off her feet, and what was much later seen as such.
Amelia Molitor, a 20-year-old OU student at the time, told Oklahoma reporters she had never seen Mixon until he “harassed” and attacked her. “He gave me one punch. He fractured my face in four places … my nose, my sinuses … they’re broken.”
In the AFC Divisional round, Joe Mixon and the Bengals face the Bills.
She predicted reprisals from OU fans: “That’s my big fear. I’ve been warned to remain off of social media to avoid [OU fans] coming after me.” In this manner, college football fans can be quite devoted.
Mixon was permitted to remain enrolled and to continue receiving his full scholarship. The judge postponed his sentencing for minor assault after he filed a “Alford Plea,” affirming his innocence while acknowledging the evidence against him.
He returned in 2015 to lead the Sooners to the College Football Playoff and was selected in the second round by the Bengals in 2017.
Oddly, or perhaps not, there was and is video of the incident, but local officials refused to release it for two years. I have observed; it is revolting.
Mixon is expected to start a playoff game on Sunday despite the fact that he brutally assaulted a young woman eight and a half years ago, as evidenced by a two-year-delayed video. CBS is quite unlikely to briefly mention this fact.
Would he have been permitted to continue at OU and picked by an NFL team if this video had been released immediately? Alternatively, he may have been prosecuted with felony assault.
Sunday night, the Cowboys face the 49ers on the road. Jason Peters, a 6-foot-4, 335-pound veteran offensive left tackle for Dallas, was scratched Friday with a hip ailment. Fox’s Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen, along with other network NFL broadcasters, would have undoubtedly mentioned Peters’ tremendous All-Pro performances, primarily with the Eagles, had he been playing.
Peters’ 2013 arrest for leading Louisiana police on a car chase that exceeded 100 mph before he was finally caught at 4:45 a.m. and charged with resisting arrest is unlikely to be mentioned.
He has been arrested earlier for disturbing the peace and for resisting arrest.
Peters would be responsible for blocking for running back Ezekiel Elliott, a threat to civilization since he played at Ohio State for that paragon of social virtue, Urban Meyer, who is now a Fox college football analyst.
Elliott was suspended by the NFL for six games during the 2017 season for breaking the “personal conduct policy” — following serious allegations that he abused his ex-girlfriend on five separate instances in 2016.
That was not captured on video.
There is also video evidence of Elliott attempting to pull the blouse of a woman he was seated next to while attending a parade in Dallas in March of 2017. He was only able to expose one of her breasts. The NFL gave him a letter in cut-out form.
Thus, Mixon and Elliott escaped to play, Peters would have, while Rice was expelled for life due to the footage showing him cold-cocking his future bride.
Three days after Hamlin nearly died in front of a national television audience, a 16-year-old girl named Ashari Hughes died during a high school flag football game in Las Vegas due to “a medical episode.”
That made rapid, scant news. There was no video available.
Ford was an intriguing response to a three-point trivia question.
Anything worthwhile is worth doing to excess:
Last week’s passing of NBA coach and player Chris Ford at the age of 74 restored his status as the first NBA player to make a 3-point shot. In October 1979, while playing for the Celtics, Ford made a 3-pointer against the Rockets in a 114-106 victory.
This motivated reader Bob Friant to take action: In that game, Boston tried three 3s. Larry Bird and Dave Cowens missed theirs.
Rick Barry made one of three attempts for Houston, which went 1-for-10. Robert Reid, Mike Dunleavy, Calvin Murphy, and Rudy Tomjanovich were absent from the remaining seven games.
The last time these teams played, late last month, a total of 101 3-point attempts were made.
Follow the political ball as it bounces:
Knee-jerking, pandering Rob Manfred, with the urging of the MLBPA, not to mention President Biden, pulled MLB’s latest All-Star Game out of mostly black Atlanta and moved it to mostly white Denver to protest the dubious claim that Georgia enacted racist “Jim Crow” voting legislation — despite results to the extreme contrary.
This shortsighted, stupid action, based on erroneous, wishful political claims, cost Atlanta residents and local merchants millions of dollars in projected revenue.
So now that the NFL has chosen Atlanta as the if-needed neutral venue of a Bills-Chiefs AFC Championship — thereby ignoring Biden’s, Manfred’s and the MLBPA’s ignorance-aided attitude and choice — reader A. Masliansky has a question:
Will corporations, such as Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines, which also believed this false assertion, push for a boycott or removal of the game if the AFC Championship game is staged in Atlanta?
And if not, why not? Could it be that they were all gravely mistaken the first time, ready to arbitrarily separate us before taking a closer look?
Anywhere in California is good.
I wonder if Fox’s knowledge of American geography has improved in time for Sunday’s game between the Cowboys and 49ers.
On Saturday, during the Seahawks-Niners game, Fox aired a beautiful image of the San Francisco skyline.
The only issue is that the Niners play their home games in Santa Clara, California, approximately 40 miles from San Francisco and just outside of San Jose. It was the equivalent of displaying Philadelphia during a Giants or Jets home game six miles from Manhattan.
Fox’s Joe Davis last week hailed Seattle running back Kenneth Walker with “good vision” for a cut-back that transformed bupkis into a 5-yard gain. Excellent play!
Vision has historically been an undervalued trait of running backs. It was his exceptional eyesight, not his speed, that enabled Barry Sanders to turn large deficits into long-term wins, as witnessed by those who witnessed him.
Reader Ken MacGarrigle leaves us with the following foresightful advice and warning from the English author George Orwell’s 1949 novel “1984”:
“Football [soccer], drink, and above all gambling dominated their thoughts. It was not difficult to keep them in check.
»NFL rarely worries about heinous conduct unless there is video evidence«