Does Dez Bryant Need a Babysitter?
This week, Dez Bryant was arrested for misdemeanor violence in an incident that caused his mother to tell the 911 that her son “tried to kill me.”
Yesterday, PFT linked to long-time Dallas Morning News columnist Rich Gosselin, who said that the Cowboys should suspend the talented–but troubled–wide receiver for the maximum four games:
“It’s time the Cowboys let Bryant know this type of behavior will no longer be tolerated. Suspend him and let him have a month to experience life without football and a paycheck. Maybe he’ll understand what a privilege it is playing in the NFL. If not, cut him. Let him take his baggage elsewhere. Goodbye and good riddance.”
As PFT points out, this is really Bryant’s first serious brush with the law–he’s faced lawsuits in the past over unpaid debt–and we might not want to rush to conclusions before the legal system plays itself out.
A better solution was raised by ESPN analyst Tim Hasselbeck, who appeared on Doug Gottlieb’s ESPN radio show yesterday (19 minutes in; insider subscription required):
“There’s going to be a lot of people who say, ‘Well, you need to discipline him somehow and make it hurt’ and whether that be by means of suspension or not I think you can it. But I don’t know that’s necessarily what you need to do. The problem with guys like Dez: you need to have somebody holding their hand 24/7 because you can tell guys, ‘Hey, get rid of the friends that were bad influences on you and start hanging around the right people that will be accountable for your actions and keep you from doing things that you shouldn’t be doing’ but what happens when those people are family members?”
Hasselbeck finishes:
“You need to have somebody with him at all times. So, if I’m the Dallas Cowboys, and they think he can be as talented and productive as a lot of people think he can be for them, you gotta have somebody babysit him.”
This seems like a more appropriate solution than a four-game suspension, which would isolate Bryant and leave him further to his own devices. Bryant doesn’t seem to be bad-intentioned and if he was handcuffed to a credible mentor that could steward him into good situations and out of bad ones, he will have a much better chance to realize his otherworldly potential.
If someone from the Cowboys organization reads this, I know a sportswriter based in Chicago who thinks he’d be a good man for the job.
Photo Credit: NY Daily News