Get Your Mind Rite: Pacman Jones

- Football, Get Your Mind Rite -

I have a buddy who hates strip joints. His reasoning is quite entertaining:

“I’d rather rent a porno and throw my wallet at the TV screen!”

Obviously, Adam “Pacman” Jones is not this buddy I speak of.

If recent allegations are indeed true, Jones’s preference is more along the lines of throwing his wallet directly at strippers’ faces, but expecting to preserve his dollars just the same as my buddy.

Pacman Jones is not the first professional athlete to act a fool inside or outside a strip joint (Especially in Las Vegas, where the only things easier to find are slot machines, ATMs and Elvis). It just so happens that he has the longest rap sheet of those frequent fool-actors. As we all know, in professional sports especially, once a bad apple is spotted, the bunch is compromised. Call it an overreaction or a necessary precaution if you will, but there’s no doubt that the league will drop the hammer on Jones once the winter meetings come to an end.

Being involved alone earns him a suspension by league rule. But if criminal charges are indeed brought to the Tennessee Titans star defensive back/kick return man, he will most likely miss an entire season. Unless, as John Clayton mentioned on Mike & Mike this morning, Jones pleads his case in amazing fashion, in which the league would grant this one-time leniency and only apply a suspension of 10-12 games.

Side note: Maybe Jones should lobby Chris Berman and Tom Jackson to take the stand as character witnesses, attesting that imitating sounds of the Pacman video game during Jones’s highlights somehow makes him less a threat to society and more apt to finally change his ways?

The No Fun League cracks down on many unnecessary issues — end zone celebrations, player equipment (think Jake Plummer tribute patch/sticker to Pat Tillman, Sean Taylor socks, the towel often used for wiping football-like babies in end zones and mocking waiter cloths, etc.), league age limits, etc. — but in this case one would be hard-pressed to defend a heavy penalty for Jones. There’s something about a person who repeatedly spits in the face of women and (allegedly) spikes strippers’ heads onto grounds after throwing thousands of dollar bills in faces that… just isn’t likeable.

So to Pacman we say: GET YOUR MIND RITE!

Stay away from strip joints, folks who always end up getting you into trouble (please refer to Allen Iverson’s maturation and entourage downsizing) and any event in which more than $100 worth of dollar bills is required. That is, unless you find yourself invited to a national snack and soda machine convention of some sort. You’re much too talented an athlete to let an addiction to loogies, strippers and crime ruin you. Keep your head up because, on the plus side, if you do bounce back from your punishment, start anew and shine for the rest of your playing career, there just might be a seat for you at The World Wide Leader in the NFL Sunday Countdown Booth.