Sacked!

Following up on the NFL story I did on Thursday (Blitz Package), I have two more updates from the league, just in time for the Big Game!

First, in regards to the Peyton Manning story, where one of the leagues top player's wife had Human Growth Hormones sent to the Manning home, a medication which has very few real, non-athelet doping, medical uses, all of which are extremely serious in nature, this all while Manning was recovering from repeated neck surgeries.  It seems Manning sent two thugs...I mean Private Investigators to the home of the parents of the person who was the source of the claim against Peyton Manning, Charles Sly.  These two individuals lied and presented themselves as law enforcement.  We know this because Sly's sister called 911 to report the two, who had claimed they were law enforcement but refused to show ID.  The confrontation de-escalated when the Private Investigators realized the police were about to show up and admitted who they really were.

It's known that Sly eventually had contact with these thugs...I mean Private Dicks, and soon afterwards, recanted the story he told Al Jazeera America.  A reminder, the Al Jazeera America story was an expose on how easy it was to get performance enhancing drugs and HGH, but Peyton Manning was never part of their original story.  It was only after Charles Sly offered up Peyton on his own that they reported his wife's HGH love.  I think it's fair to say something is really wrong here.  Just when you thought the worst thing about Manning was his love of Papa John's pizza.

Then there is the tragic case of Johnny Manziel. To be fair to the NFL, their league is not the only one where this sort of things happens, but it's rare to see an individual implode on this level.  Manziel was a great quarterback who fell in love with his image and the partying lifestyle which came with it.  He's a product of today's youth sports machine.  A kid who had undeniable talent, pandered and preened over during his pre-high school and high school days, with parents and the community turning a blind eye to his partying and disrespectful antics, because he could play sports.  He ends up at Texas A&M, were the school gains national attention for the quality quarterback he can be when he focuses, but shields his drinking and partying which were reportedly already starting to take a toll on him.  Because no one ever told him 'no,' he felt as if he could do anything.

He was drafted by the Cleveland Browns in 2014, a decision I insisted was insanely stupid back then.  By the time he was a pro, his drinking was too out of control.  His performance on the field suffered, but the most important thing for him was the drinks and parties to chase away the failures.  The days of players drinking beers on the sidelines and then heading into the game to throw the winning touchdown are long gone, only realistic in movies geared towards the lowest common denominator.  He's a pro athlete, getting millions of dollars to play a sport, but he has thrown it all away.  He'll never be able to recover from this, even if he was to go to rehab immediately, and effectively beat his substance abuse problem.

The thing which is so sad about both of these stories is how on one side, Manziel, you have a guy who never took it seriously, and has now destroyed his potential, and maybe his life.  On the other side, Manning, you have a guy who, if the HGH was actually for him and not his wife, could not turn off the competition element of his brain.  He took it too seriously.  Instead of accepting reality and nature, if the HGH was his, he tried to postpone time but loading up his body with chemicals and drugs which will likely take years off of his life.

Like I said, I'm watching the puppy bowl.