A Few Days Ago. . . I wrote a quick post rounding up the criminal troubles of various athletes, including Pittsburgh Steelers runningback Jerome Bettis, who was being investigated on charges that he sexually assaulted a 22-year old women who had been seeking an autograph. As it turns out, the whole story seems to have been fabricated by the woman in an attempt to snare Bettis in an extortion scheme.
It was this news that led fellow sports blogger Dan Lewis to apologize for thinking that Bettis might be guilty:
For this, I apologize. And not only because you're probably innocent.
You see, I spent a good deal of time this summer writing up football rumors every day, and every day it seemed that another NFLer was being charged with, well, something. Heck, one of my first columns focused on Mark Chmura. Mark Chmura!
But I digress. When you see all these guys, the words "National Felons League" begins to ring true. So you'll understand my error.
Still, that doesn't make it acceptable. I -- and anyone else who thought you were going up the river -- should know to presume innocence and to avoid assigning guilt by association. Sure, it is often times safe to ignore these tenets, but one error like this is one too many.
Which left me puzzled: just what did Dan have to apologize for? From where I sit, absolutely nothing at all. All he did was draw a perfectly logical conclusion from the facts as he saw them at the time. In fact, Dan didn't even write about the charges in his own blog -- making me wonder if he's subtly pointing a finger at folks like me who reported them in the first place.
It's not an easy call to make. When I first heard of the charges against Bettis earlier this week, I hesitated to post them. Then, the ghost of the Washington Post's Sally Jenkins whispered in my ear, and asked why I was letting Bettis off lightly. After all, if he had been charged with another crime that wasn't of a sexual nature, I probably would have written about it. And, as Jenkins said in her book, Men Will Be Boys, the folks who cover football usually gloss over any athletes trouble with the law. (Though in this case Al Michaels and John Madden did discuss the investigation during Monday night's Steelers-Patriots game.)
In the end, the best you can do is this. Report the charges as they come in, and report them as they get thrown out, or as the athletes get convicted. It's the only fair solution.
