Michael Ventre

I’ve been reading up on Adam “Pacman” Jones, the Tennessee Titans’ cornerback who has been backpedaling from the long arm of the law almost since he arrived in the NFL. It seems he had a difficult childhood. His father was shot and killed when Pacman was six. His mother spent three years in prison. His uncle died from a knife wound. Pacman was raised mostly by his grandmother, but she died of cancer shortly after he left high school.

The amateur shrink in me sees a troubled young man with a lot of anger and even more disposable income and free time. His status as an NFL star is both a blessing and a burden, but the effects of the latter has been more prominently displayed.

That’s all well and good. But at some point, no matter how lousy a hand you’ve been dealt, you have to pay the piper. And if I can’t blame my use of two clichés in the same sentence on my upbringing, then Pacman should have to own up also.

The word on the street — Park Avenue in New York, to be exact — is that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is expected soon to hand down a new code of conduct for his players. It isn’t directed solely at Pacman, although he certainly has been the baton twirler in the parade of miscreants that has high-stepped through the sports world in recent months. And the league still has to reach common ground with the players’ union, although many members have voiced support for stricter measures because certain guys have made the NFL seem like “Oz” in pads.

But clearly something needs to be done, because there have been about 50 arrests in the past year involving NFL players. Pacman and his fellow inmates have abused their positions as professional athletes, and continue to do so with impunity because nobody is telling them they can’t.

Obviously, Pacman is king of these rogues. He is so proficient at screwing up that I’m tempted to refer to him as “the Michael Jordan of wayward athletes,” except I don’t know that we need a dominant figure in this category. Since being drafted by the Titans in 2005, Pacman has been either arrested or questioned about incidents by police a total of 10 times. That’s almost a full season of “Law and Order.”

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The league has really done zippo during this one-man crime wave, and the Titans have done even less. In that regard, they are all complicit.

I understand the term, “A man is innocent until proven guilty,” but that’s really misapplied, because it only refers to proceedings in a court of law. For instance, let’s imagine you have a teenage son and he takes the family car out for a ride without permission, has a few beers, wraps it around a tree and then is charged by the police. Now you have to hire a lawyer for him and go to court. The kid says to you, “You can’t punish me because a man is innocent until proven guilty,” and you say, “The heck I can’t. I have my own system of justice. You’re grounded forever.”

The NFL is not the family living room, but the same principle should apply because contracts contain explicit codes of conduct, and it appears as though Goodell and the suits that surround him are finally getting that. Pacman embarrassed the league and its players with the whole Las Vegas strip joint incident, which was excessive even for a lunatic with a checkered past. He doesn’t deserve to play in 2007, and he should have to prove that he has cleaned up his act before he is allowed to return beyond that.

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