Baby Athletes

Dez Bryant is being coddled by the Dallas Cowboys.  Apparently, a grown professional cannot take care of himself.  He needs a team of three people to keep track of him.  Listed below are the six rules he agreed to in order to continue to play football. 

• A midnight curfew. If he's going to miss curfew, team officials must know in advance.
• No drinking alcohol.
•  He can't attend any strip clubs and can only attend nightclubs if they are approved by the team and he has a security team with him.
• He must attend counseling sessions twice a week.
• A rotating three-man security team will leave one man with Bryant at all times.
• Members of the security team will drive Bryant to practices, games and team functions.

This is a professional athlete people!  Now granted, he's young and has more money than he ever dreamed of when he was growing up, but you shouldn't have to do that.  All that should have to be done is have these written into his contract when he signed it.  Everyone knew that he had some personal issues coming out of college.  Just put some verbage in the contract that states that if you don't tow the line, you'll get cut.  You don't have a job if you can't follow the rules.

The stipulations about the curfew and attending counseling make sense, I like them.  Midnight is reasonable, and besides nothing good happens after one o'clock in the morning.  And knowing that he has had some personal issues in the past, having counseling sessions a couple of times a week gives him the opportunity to work through the issues.  You know, instead of going out and self destructing.  I don't know how I feel about the no alcohol thing.  Drinking never really leads to good decisions, especially in heavy amounts, but do you mean to tell me that the guy can't have a beer or two after a game?

The big issues deal with this, for me, is the security team.  Professional baby sitters.  Three guys are getting paid to babysit another adult.  At what point did it become necessary for this to happen?  One able bodied adult needing another to drive them to their job.  I might start lifting weights and start talking to some teams to see if they need any of their players need a babysitter.  I could stand to make some serious bank to make sure someone else doesn't screw up their life. 

The simple solution to this problem is not to pay them as much money as they are making.  If you don't make hundreds of thousands of dollars every month, guess what, you aren't going to strip clubs.  You aren't making horrible financial decisions like buying ninety thousand dollar cars that you don't drive.  You won't have people coming around looking for handouts.  People who are looking for handouts because they live a life that might be a little less than savory.