One Fantasy Football Draft in the Books, Two To Go

My first of three Fantasy Football drafts just concluded. I couldn’t be more excited about the performance of “Living Bones” in a league made up of colleagues from my former company. This team is loaded at running back and could be OK at wide receiver.  I’m not happy with drafting a defense so early, but good defenses were going quick and early so my selection in that round was predicated on draft movements.

Here is my team. You have to read the full post to get  the team.

Jason Whitlock right on Vick

In the days since Michael Vick announced that he would accept a plea bargain much has been written about how it would affect what seems to be a football career of promise turned to what might have been. But one column, published in the Kansas City Star by Jason Whitlock cuts to the heart of the matter, on a deeper level.

First, you might know Whitlock from his appearances on ESPN and perhaps the Don Imus controversy where he wrote that the problem was as much about the problems of the African-American culture starts with victimhood. Whitlock was right then and he’s right today when he writes that Vick didn’t have the courage to walk away from his past.

Whitlock writes,

It’s my belief that if Vick stayed involved with dogfighting, he did so primarily because it was a way to stay involved in an activity in which his “boys” still participated. It was Vick’s way of keeping it real. He was fearful of being labeled a sellout, fearful of having his blackness questioned.

Instead of reaching out to his friends to use his new influence to help them get out of these illegal ventures and perhaps into something more profitable - and legal - Vick remained involved because he wanted to “keep it real.” Whitlock says Vick did nothing but enable the problem.

Whitlock adds,

For athletes and other people who experience professional success, keeping it real should mean offering your lifelong friends and family members an opportunity to acquire the skills necessary to join the mainstream.

It’s an interesting commentary and one worth reading. You certainly won’t read or hear about it on ESPN, but it reaches an aspect to this dogfighting episode that hasn’t been discussed, but should have been by now.