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the regular season. Thirty thousand dollars a week! — that’s more than some of those young black kids can probably reasonably expect to earn in a year (legally, anyway) in their entire lives.
What is wrong with our society, anyway? Why doesn’t Commissioner Tagliabue have the courage to tell Manley, “Sorry, Dexter, but you messed up. You messed up not once, not twice, but three times. We’re sorry, but you can’t come back again.”
Manley, when asked about the possible double standard being set by his reinstatement, said (according to the Washington Post), “That’s what this country is about: giving people chances. I’m an American, I deserve a chance at life.”
That’s true. Dexter Manley does deserve a chance at life. ■
But Dexter already had three chances at football. He blew it all three times.
I grew up as the son of a baseball writer, so that sport was, and remains, my first love. In baseball, you get three strikes and you’re out.
That rule ought to be good enough for footBsll as well — at least as far as the league’s drug testing policy is concerned.
The threat of a lifetime ban' will become meaningless, and its effectiveness as a deterent will be gone, if players continue to be allowed to return to professional sports after breaking the rules —especially serious infractions like drug use.
I’m not going to argue the question of whether sports figures are, or ought to be, held up as role models for our youth.
More to the point, they are highly visible members of our society. When they are treated more leniently than those who, by accident of birth, remain less fortunate, our society suffers.
Perhaps making Dexter Manley an example is unfair. Far less fair, to me, is allowing him to return after serving a penalty that amounts to a slap on the wrist.
I hope, for his sake, that Dexter Manley has beaten his demons, and his comeback succeeds. I wish, for society’s sake,1 that we Had not been given the opportunity to find out.
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