The Swamp

Deadspin sucks, but sometimes....

Too late for the electric violin comment?

This is a good look for him, he should bring it back...

Looks like Al Franken, only less handsome.

I thought you were just testing the autocorrect feature and hoping for a Fatty McB change

temporassy wrote:Too late for the electric violin comment?

Mother fucking twilts

There's someone else that he REALLY looks like, but I can't remember.

He looked so innocent before all of the colonoscopies.

I loved him in Broadcast News.

Got it. Not as close as I remembered, though.

Are we talking about this motherfucker or are we all footballed out?

The Sharper thing, or something else?

What did Pete do now

Is the Sharper thing an actual thing? I mean I get Petey's point, I just probably wouldn't have made it so publicly if I were him. I hope all of these same people are all up in arms again when Ray Lewis gets in.

His "they told me just to look at the football game" stance perfectly encapsulates Peter King having no actual self anymore.

Katie Nolan is the best.

To use a hypothetical, if say arguably the best middle linebacker of all-time happened to be, I don't know a murderer (I'm just spit balling here, I realize how unlikely that would be to actually be the case I mean come on), I'd think he should still be in the HoF.

Darren Sharper is so borderline that it's easy to keep him out but if Ed Reed were a multi-rapist I'd still vote him in.

Though that chick makes a great point when she googles bylaws.

Does this chick actually think that the NFL is going to break Darren Sharper out of prison and celebrate him were he to get into the Hall of Fame?

EDIT: Oh come on, nobody is going to rape because Darren Sharper gets a plaque and people then think it's ok to do so.

That argument was pretty weak, but overall she makes some good points.

How embarrassing would it be to have a HoF induction ceremony where the guy getting inducted is in prison for fucking rape? As much as I hate Ray Lewis, I don't know that that is a fair comp. He was obviously implicated and he may well have killed someone, but he made his deal and then played another zillion years in the NFL after that. In the eyes of the legal system, he didn't do anything (other than obstruct justice or whatever BS charge he pled to).

If Sharper is convicted of drugging and raping a half-dozen or so women, which certainly looks likely, that's miles worse than Lewis.

ETA: If you're Peter King, I think you have to take a step back and realize a) you probably shouldn't be voting to put rapists in the Hall of Fame, even if they rushed for 20,000 yards or threw for 1,000 TDs and b) even if you don't agree with point a, making the case for putting a rapist in the Hall of Fame just looks bad. Best to keep your fat mouth shut.

ETFA: If Sharper somehow beats this rap, then the Lewis comp is probably more apt.

No, but having commented on woman's role in football before, she calls bullshit when a bunch of men turn a blind eye to women being victims or potential victims.

I sort of agree with Gunpowder that King's stance here may be as much about Lewis as it is about Sharper. Even before the rape issues arose, most people would have ranked Sharper behind Reed, Dawkins and Harrison, so I highly doubt he would have ever come close to the HOF. And given the way the public and the league's sensitivity towards off-field issues has changed, there's no way Ray gets a slap in the wrist from the NFL for the murder case if his career occurred 15 years later. If an identical situation arose today with someone like Patrick Willis or Bobby Wagner, I'm not sure they'd ever play another NFL game.

Let's pretend it was Ed Reed. What's the positive in pretending that this great safety didn't spend his free time as a serial rapist? The on/off clause is likely to wipe out personality conflicts and politics, not dozens of violent felonies.

(Also, even assuming the absolute worst case scenario of the Lewis situation, Sharper is miles worse in my opinion.)

mister d wrote:Let's pretend it was Ed Reed. What's the positive in pretending that this great safety didn't spend his free time as a serial rapist? The on/off clause is likely to wipe out personality conflicts and politics, not dozens of violent felonies.

What's the positive? It's a plaque in the Hall of Fame, who gives a shit? You don't have to pretend he didn't rape.

Why do you have to celebrate him and honor him? Say 'Ed Reed is a rapist and he's in jail for rape, but he was a great player so we're going to put him in the hall of fame. Unfortunately he couldn't be here because he's in prison for life' and move on to actually honor the next person in line.

I don't really care either way but I would vote Ed Rapist in.

Yeah, I disagree strongly. The downside of "my Hall of Fame is incomplete without the 3rd best safety of all-time" pales in comparison to the downside of "we're going to vote for and give a plaque to this serial rapist because, to us, all that matters are his football accomplishments".


(I know this is a shrug and/or compartmentalization issue to a lot of people. I would guess a rape victim slash NFL fan (of which I am neither) wouldn't consider this a shrug scenario and that should matter to the NFL.)


((And no, I'm not saying a person whose spouse has cheated on them feeling new hurt should preclude Tiki Barber or whoever from being inducted. There are logical tiers.))


(((This is also much cleaner than trying to ban a player for a past offense, regardless of convictions. MLB probably couldn't block Lueke from playing, but fans did their best to make him a pariah and now he's gone. Not voting yes is just so goddamn simple.)))

I guess I consider this a non-story...but if the "rules" are to not take into account off the field stuff then so be it. I think I heard somebody say some thing along the lines of "it's the hall of fame...not the hall of morally upstanding citizens" about the baseball HOF once.

Maybe they could just amend their bylaws to exclude rapists so rules followers like King are safe.

I'd be interested in whether those are the official rules or just the "we've always done it this way" rules.

1) I don't think I'd come up with sharper if you asked me to name the 100 best safeties of all time. Pretty sure I would have come up with Mark Kelso before Sharper. Maybe that's a me issue.

2) If Barry Bonds raped a guy but never allegedly taken steroids, I think he'd still be on the outside looking in. Morality clauses aren't a terrible thing, except then you have to justify all the Ty Cobbs of the world. Maybe football doesn't have those types of people, but I'd wager that they do but that the football hall of fame is less ingrained in the sporting culture than is the baseball HOF. And barry bonds isn't really the right comparison. Should probably be more like Andruw Jones maybe.

3) It wouldn't be a terrible thing to have a statute that you cannot be considered for the hall of fame if you have outstanding/unresolved legal matter or if you are incarcerated.

It wouldn't at all, but I'd still vote a top 3 all time player who happened to be a rapist in if I could, I think. Even if he did something that I too were a victim of which I guess would make it worse.

If Osama Bin Laden had the all-time MLB strikeout record I might vote him in.

Gunpowder wrote:If Osama Bin Laden had the all-time MLB strikeout record I might vote him in.

Did he have 7 no hitters, too? I think that's a real factor.

AB_skin_test wrote:

Gunpowder wrote:If Osama Bin Laden had the all-time MLB strikeout record I might vote him in.

Did he have 7 no hitters, too? I think that's a real factor.

The most important factor is how many WINS did he have. You play to win the game, pitchers.

brian wrote:

AB_skin_test wrote:

Gunpowder wrote:If Osama Bin Laden had the all-time MLB strikeout record I might vote him in.

Did he have 7 no hitters, too? I think that's a real factor.

The most important factor is how many WINS did he have. You play to win the game, pitchers.

0 Saves. That's for damn sure.

Ryan wrote:

Nice.

I wouldn't vote for him as long as there are other players eligible I consider equal in worth. But I wouldn't rule out voting for him at some point if he is one of the five (or however many finalists you can vote for) best players in a given year.

Yeah, clearly if Darren Sharper were borderline before rapes (which is a stretch) and then raped, he's out. I mean that's clear no matter what Latte West says.

But if it were a top top top player of all time, I think that's where the actual discussion lies.