Peppler: De’Andre Johnson, There’s No Excuse

How did you feel after the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight?

Were you with the rest of America complaining about how this should have happened years ago? How boring it was because Mayweather unanimously took the victory? Did you argue about if you would still have boxed despite a shoulder injury? I’m sure you did.

Well, here I am arguing with myself and others about a different fight; one that seems to continuously surface as opposed to fizzle after the MGM Grand has emptied.

The haymakers, the KO’s, the violent, sometimes racist words. The muscle flexing that belonged in a ring, not in a bar or a home, and certainly not in the police blotter during an off-season.

It has to stop. Of course it has to stop. But more than that, it has to stop – not just the violence, but the idea that there’s any excuse for it.

Guys, girls, lovers, friends, in real life, you have to know when to walk away. You play a game for a living, you shove and scream to either earn yourself a paycheck or to hopefully be tough enough to hug Roger Goodell or hear your name called by Adam Silver.

Despite the sport, you are role models. And despite your age, you live in a world of video recordings (ask Donald Sterling), surveillance cameras (Ray Rice, De’Andre Johnson), magazines (talking to you, Milton Bradley), and let’s not forget social media (college stars – I know there are students who have given you a ‘timeline’ full).

And just like a child has to put down the controller because the game has to end, so do the athletes. Because your work has to live in your ring, the field, the court, the diamond …

Please stop complaining about who hit who first or that we don’t understand the relationship or the circumstances. It … doesn’t … matter.

I’m by no means happy my beloved Chicago Bears brought in and released Ray McDonald after a string of incidents and then a final straw – but he shouldn’t have been signed in the first place.

I do not praise Florida State for dismissing De’Andre Johnson after having to actually see the proof. Provoked or not, he should have been released the minute he turned himself in.

My Cubbies, why on earth would you sign Milton Bradley after you knew his temperament problems?

And now, as I sit at my desk at work where I cover college athletes and their stories every single day, I am ill having to be forced to consider about how I’m going to handle an interview with likely several student athletes that have been reinstated after throwing jabs at females or choking a mother of their child, really because there is no video evidence or because they can help win championships. Sickened both with those who chose violence and those who chose to overlook the violence.

You’re all role models. It has got to end and it can’t start. It doesn’t matter how it starts.

There’s no excuse.