Of course you can legitimately pass judgement based on a person’s actions without having met that person. Everyone does this, and quite rightly. I’m not arguing one way or the other as to how the staff should respond to Berry’s actions, but your pretense that you have to know someone personally to judge his actions is flawed. As for your “90% of players have smoked pot, so it’s no big deal” argument, I suspect that number’s a bit high, but that’s beside the point. Among other things, what you miss there is the question of degree. Let’s assume that 90% of players have smoked weed before. Does that mean that any and all pot-use should be considered kosher? If half the team got together after practice and smoke-boxed the WHAC, should the coaches say, “Well, 90% of players have smoked pot before, so we should let this pass”? Again, my point isn’t about Berry, per se, but you’re putting forth some pretty flawed principles here.

It reminds me of a discussion I had last week with a business affiliate of mine over a couple of beers (OK, more than a couple). He’s about as much to the Right (yes, he is a ‘Husker fan) as I am to the Left, but we’ve agreed-to-disagree in amicable terms. He’s Red, I’m Blue, but we really like Green. Ed, I look at our (online) relationship as something similar; two different schools of thought but a common concern for the Buckeyes.

ECdS, it’s probably good to have different sheriffs in town, new or otherwise. It keeps thing hoppin’ in the off-season and probably gives Vico a deserved rest.

1. You really should read over everything that’s been written by everybody here – CLOSELY. There’s such a thing as context through which all of our visceral reactions to events ought to be filtered. A little investigation into how MySpace pages work, and Internet advertising, might be good too.

2. When you say that what Berry did was “wrong, and I don’t think we need that on our team”, you might want to give some thought to all the implications of that statement. Be careful what you wish for – some people think it’s “wrong” for scholarship athletes to be subjected to a system that’s not all that different from indentured servitude.

3. This isn’t my site, though it’s possible you’ve gotten that impression from the way I’ve pretty much hijacked the Berry threads so soon after my Block O Table submission. So I’d like to apologize for sort of monopolizing the space around here – to Vico and everybody else that’s been subjected to my ramblings. I really didn’t mean to appoint myself the sheriff of these here parts

Look I am not trying argue or get on your bad side here, I love your site its informative, and there are cool thoughts on the sport and team I love from alot of different folks.

What he did is wrong, and I don’t think we need that on our team. And I don’t care what anyone says, you don’t do it………….especially when your a prized recruit, at a prized institution , on your way to getting a prized education, you just don’t do it.

When I read a post such as this, I want to respond, if only to say: “ditto”, but that always sounds retarded.

As they say in my business “without data, all you have is an opinion”. Can’t argue with data.

Now you’re wrong again: Albert Dukes. Also, depending on your definition of “wore the scarlet (sic) and grey (sic) for us”, Jonathan Skeete. So there’s clearly precedent for allowing people charged with felonies to continue their careers as Buckeyes, on scholarship even, under Tressel.

A quick-and-dirty Google search (terms: Ohio State football felony) indicates that during Tressel’s tenure five people have been charged with felonies while holding a scholarship to play football for Ohio State: Berry, Dukes, Skeete, Louis Irizarry and Ira Guilford (if I’ve missed any, please feel free to correct me). If we assume 85 scholarships his 1st year and a turnover of 20 scholarships annually, we come up with 245 “players” at OSU under Tressel so far (I’m sure the actual number is different; this is just a quick thought experiment). Five out of 245 is 2.04%. I’m guessing that if we extrapolate the demographics of that 245-member sample out to the population at large, that rate of felony charges is not especially surprising. Another interesting thing about four of those names is that the two who were charged with violent crimes were given their walking papers outright; the one charged with drug TRAFFICKING (Skeete) had his scholarship yanked but was allowed to try to walk on; and the one charged with a consensual crime (Dukes) kept his scholarship. This is admittedly not much information to go on, but that continuum of repercussions would seem to augur well for Berry at least being given the opportunity to prove himself, as a person and as a player, at Ohio State.

We’ve already covered pretty extensively the ridiculous nature of simple possession of an ounce of pot incurring a felony charge in Florida. If he had been caught with the same amount of pot in Ohio, or ANY of the states he might possibly travel through while driving between Florida and Ohio (AL, GA, TN, KY, VA, WV, NC, SC), or ANY of the non-Ohio-states that Big Ten schools are in (PA, MI, IN, IL, IA, MN, WI), or ANY of the states they are likely to travel to for bowl games (CA, LA, TX, AZ, etc., FL excepted, ironically), he would have been charged with a misdemeanor. Not only that, but in many of those states there would not even be the possibility of any jail time, and in some there wouldn’t even be a FINE. Clearly, not all felonies are created equal, and the fact that Berry is facing a “serious” charge has more to do with the outlier status of Florida law than it does with the “serious” nature of what he did.

Maybe you want to argue the opposite – that a felony is a felony is a felony, so screw him. Or maybe you want to argue that ALL TWENTY of those states are insufficiently serious about fighting pot and should follow Florida’s example. But here’s the thing: as far as I can tell, you aren’t making any “argument” at all, just asserting your opinion that kids in general and Jamaal Berry in particular “need to be taught a lesson”, the harsher the better. The “facts” you’ve cited in support of this idea turn out to be wrong. You’re like Abe Simpson yelling at a cloud.