Adam Jones and Chris Henry have been judged guilty of conduct unbecoming.
Conduct unbecoming professional athletes and, more important, civilized human beings.
If you had these two guys in your Bad Behavior Fantasy League, you win.
Want statistics? Forget four interceptions and a 12.9-yard punt return average, or 36 receptions for 605 yards.
Jones has been arrested five times and been involved in 10 episodes in which he was charged or questioned by police.
Henry was arrested four times in three states during a 14-month period and was ticketed last month for three minor traffic charges that could cause his probation to be revoked.
Jones and Henry have a lot in common. They are 23, were chosen in the 2005 NFL draft, have played two years in the league, were teammates at West Virginia University and can’t stay out of trouble.
And they became the first two players sentenced to lengthy suspensions by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who also announced a revised, get-extremely-tough personal conduct policy.
Goodell, who took over as commissioner last year, proved Tuesday he is not going to put up with, or shut up about, the players’ transgressions, indiscretions and public idiocy.
Good for Goodell.
Jones and Henry are the Enough-Already Examples.
If this doesn’t send a message to the three-dozen pro football players – including recent Super Bowl participant Tank Johnson, currently in jail, and nine Cincinnati Bengals who violated laws in 2006 – or to the thousands of other players, present or future, then there’s something tragically wrong with the players, their union, the coaches and owners who sign them and keep them on the team, the league, the fans who idolize such players and a sports-mad society (sportswriters not excepted) that turns them into heroes when they actually are villains.
The league previously cracked back and down firmly on players who gambled on football and who took performance-enhancing, or mind-altering, drugs. The NFL now has decided to go after the pathetic lawless types who roam the offenses and defenses of football on Sunday afternoons and Monday nights.
Good for the NFL.
The Broncos and their fanatics obviously can’t cast stones. A Broncos player, Brandon Marshall, recently was arrested in a domestic dispute, and a former Broncos favorite, Tyrone Braxton, pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana and cocaine. A heralded Broncos free-agent signee, Travis Henry (no relation to Chris Henry), was suspended in 2005 for four games for (at least twice) violating the league’s substance-abuse rules.
The Broncos have a history.
It is true that professional football players are no better or worse than the rest of men in America (politicians, CEOs, plumbers, sportswriters), but they have an accountability to their peers and to youth.
“It is important that the NFL be represented consistently by outstanding people as well as great football players, coaches and staff. We hold ourselves to higher standards of responsible conduct,” Goodell stated Tuesday.
Players charged with possessing guns or drugs, and assistant coaches who drive nude and drunk through fast-food windows, and executives and owners who don’t abide by the laws must get the point that they are not untouchable.
Players must learn that wandering out of bounds potentially will result in danger.
Possibly even death.
Carmelo Anthony has one more image problem after he was stopped March 18 at a 7-Eleven with his fiancée and a friend. The Nuggets’ visible star, in an interview with The Post’s Marc J. Spears this week, said he was hassled by an autograph seeker, who made a call on a cellphone and told someone to come to the store and “kill Melo.” Anthony’s friend punched the other man and later was charged with simple assault.
“People are going to say I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Anthony said.
He was in the wrong place at the wrong time and with the wrong friend. They should have called 911 or driven away immediately. Why were they there at 3:30 a.m., and why doesn’t Anthony have his own “Big Gulp” machine at home? Why be in that situation?
Anthony certainly is not alone. Young athletes, with money, tend not to think clearly at times.
“Pacman” Jones, or “Suspendedman” Jones, and Chris Henry tended not to think at all. They are paying for their multiple improprieties, and they won’t be playing for a half season, a full year or maybe forever.
The NFL’s new strict code: Conduct Becoming.
Good for everybody.
Staff writer Woody Paige can be reached at 303-954-1095 or wpaige@denverpost.com.
