My Take On the Daniel Hood Mess
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
If I'd been in charge of public relations, which I'm not, and I wanted to take Daniel Hood as a scholarship football player, I would have taken him and stated that he was redshirting for his freshman season. If he fulfilled all requirements as a redshirt, then he'd be eligible to play football at UT. As is, Tennessee can be criticized for chasing after a kid that, whaddya know, fills a position of need. Here's my write-up at FanHouse where I grapple with the idea of how far second chances extend. Like I said, this is a tough call, I don't really begrudge anyone their opinion on this matter.
I do have some issues with phrases that are being thrown around regarding this story.
1. You can't rest on the nebulous term "character issues" with a case like this. The facts are dirty, uncomfortable, and ugly. I think that means they need to be seen if they're publicly available, which they are. That's why I included the facts from the appeal. Not including the details of his crime makes it very easy to play the second chance card.
2. What does second chance mean? Hood already got his second chance. He's not in jail, and he's eligible to head off to college and major in whatever he wants. Good for him, I hope he succeeds in life. But does that mean that as part of the second chance, he absolutely has to play football at a major university? I don't think so.
3. No more talk about redemption in a sports context. Sports isn't about redemption in this context; you can redeem yourself on the field for sports failings, not personal failings. It completely trivializes the seriousness of his crime to suggest that if he gets 14 sacks in a season on defense or doesn't give up a sack as a four-year starter on the offensive line, he's somehow helped to make up for what he did. He hasn't...at all. Nothing he does on a football field matters in relation to what he did when he was 13. It just doesn't.
4. The flouncing around of the victim's letter that says she's forgiven him as if this clears the slate or legitimizes any decision by the university. Whatever friendship or rancor the two are able to create, that's between them. The relationship at question here is between the university and Daniel Hood. I think interjecting the victim here artificially hides that dynamic.
Anyway, Chris Low has a positive profile piece up about Daniel Hood now. But the final lines exacerbate the weirdness of this entire situation:
He has earmarked the tickets he receives for that Sept. 5 opener against Western Kentucky for his cousin, who is now married, has a child, and lives in Virginia.
"The first tickets I get are hers," Hood said. "Without her support, I wouldn't have this second chance. It's opened a lot of doors for me.
"She could have hated me for the rest of her life, but she's chosen to forgive me and we've been able to become family again."
So the woman he raped gets his free football tickets?
This really is a William Faulkner story.Labels: daniel hood tennessee rape scholarship
Posted by Clay Travis at 6:08 PM
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