I Like to Reggae, but You Dance Too Fast For Me

In the category of "Things That Can Only Come From the Mind of a Law Student During Finals"...

It's a time of high hopes around the world right now, my friends. We have a new super-disease on our hands in the swine flu and NFL franchises, via the draft, have just added new blood to their teams in their ongoing quest for the Lombardi Trophy. The juxtaposition of these two seemingly unconnected events made me think:

Sure, everybody's worried about the swine flu right now, but didn't we expect big things from SARS back in the day? Similarly, aren't there players every year that come in with mountains of promise and hype that only end up bringing their fans pain and regret for what might have been?
In much the same vein, if SARS was the Ki-Jana Carter of communicable diseases, seeing as though both came into our lives with great promises of hype and both ultimately fizzled into a combination of disappointment and respiratory issues (actually, that was just SARS), I foresee the swine flu being the Matthew Stafford of communicable diseases.
Both made their debut on the national/international scene in late April 2009, both caused numerous talking heads to gush about their potential, and in the end, both will probably end up killing people in Detroit.

And It Really Didn't Have to Stop, It Just Kept On Going

Congratulations to Mr. Andrew Tuegel for correctly naming "High Speed" by Coldplay as the Tuesday Song of the Day.

I've purposefully kept the posts regarding America's Team to a minimum during the offseason, and this will probably be the only Cowboys-related post until the draft later this month, but a topic has arisen in the Valley Ranch universe that is impossible to ignore.

NFL renegade Pacman Jones, who is currently serving a suspension at the mandate of Commissioner/Sheriff/Camp Counselor Roger Goodell, is currently making major overtures to ensure that he is involved in the league next year playing for the team with one star on their helmets. The "Make It Rain" Maestro went as far as to appear yesterday on Michael Irvin's (a Hall-of-Famer who had his own ups and downs on and off the field) radio show to discuss his desire to move to the 'Boys next season.
Here's the problem: throughout the interview, Pacman acknowledged that he had made some bad decisions in the past (visiting gentleman's establishments, distributing large sums of cash at said gentlemen's establishments, and generally leaving a greater path of destruction in his wake than the tornado that destroyed Greensburg, KS*), but he also pinned some of the blame for those incidents on the police and members of the media.
I'll be one of the first people to tell you that the media in America, sports or otherwise, does not exactly do its part in portraying events accurately, and the police are not always the "good guys", but Pacman, my formerly dread-locked friend, you cannot continue to run from the likely fact that besides Michael Vick, you are the most-loathed (current/former) player in the league. Well, except for Brandon Jacobs among Cowboys fans, but that's another story for another time.

As I told the gentlemen at The Jig and Twig, I would rather that the Cowboys utilized one of their first-round draft picks (#22 or #28) on a corner (Antoine Cason, Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, Leodis McKelvin, etc.) rather than taking on the potential locker room cancer that is the Pacman Jones experience*. I understand that given the more stringent NFL disciplinary guidelines, teams may be willing to take chances on questionable character guys by short-term, performance-clause heavy deals, but it seems that the Cowboys are ready to put together another great season in '08-09, and I don't want the locker-room to turn into another reformation project for Jerry & Co.

*Too soon for that one? Probably so.
**Never to be confused with the Alan Parsons Project or the Jimi Hendrix Experience.