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Why This Whole Thing With Gregg Williams Has No Comparison

That's right, Gregg Williams is looking at you.
That's right, Gregg Williams is looking at you.

Hey guys, sorry about being AWOL recently. Long story short, I got pretty sick last week. I'm good now, but that's why I was absent.

In any case, I was still following sports in my illness, and I happened to be listening to some of the backlash from "Bountygate" or whatever this crap with Gregg Williams is called.

Some of the reactions have me totally baffled. If you haven't heard the audio, you should. It's everywhere at this point.

Some players are saying, "This isn't new." Some ESPN analysts are saying, "Everyone does it, what's the big deal?" and even others are saying, "He deserves a second chance. Everyone deserves a second chance."

What, what, and what? Gregg Williams had his second chance. He might've had a third chance, and he still played with fire, and got burned.

I haven't heard the "Everyone does it," since I was a kid. C'mon man! That's a terrible excuse. If I'm driving 80 in a 60 with a pack of 58 billion cars that are also driving 80 in a 60, guess what? If I get pulled over, I'm still speeding; what I'm doing is still against the law. All the "everyone does it" thing suggests is that there's a sense of lawlessness in the group, and if there's someone who can control it, then it needs to be controlled.

Listen, I have no qualms with a DC telling someone, "I want you to send a message to them that we won't be pushed around." The line for me is drawn immediately after that. I like to see defenses smash the sin out of someone, but not to intentionally injure someone. I'm not naive to think that injuries won't happen anyway. Injuries are a part of the game, unfortunately, but to hear Williams say "Let's see what we can do to Vernon Davis's ankle under the pile", among many other straight-up dirty things that said, "Hey, let's try to hurt this guy." that doesn't fly with me.

Does he deserve a lifetime ban? I don't know, but to listen to people say "Oh yeah? Well the NFL has allowed convicted felons, people who have failed multiple drug tests, etc back into the league."

There is no comparison to those people. Those people made choices that negatively affected their own lives. Vick did something dumb, and has done an admirable job of cleaning up. People fail drug tests and get DUIs all the time.

What Gregg Williams did, was tell others to negatively affect someone else's life, someone else's livelihood. The attempt to take someone else's life out of their own hands by intentionally trying to hurt them is why there is no comparison, and why he should receive punishment as such.