There may be hope for NFL football players

Over the last few years, as I am really starting to think the football players in the NFL are threatening to ruin this sport I love, along comes a glimmer of light. First, Roger Goodell seems committed to forcing players to clean up their acts. Then I read about something that happened down in Texas with a couple of the Houston Texans’ players 2 years ago that gives me hope. If you haven’t heard about it, you will enjoy this story.

Let me first set the stage. In pro sports, over the last few years, it’s sort of become a normal thing for a player new to a team to pay some outlandish money or gift to one of his new teammates to get his regular jersey number that another player was already wearing. Clinton Portis, Roger Clemens, and others have all done it.

And we are talking money like $38,000 paid by Portis to a Washington Redskins teammate for his jersey number. This kind of thing, combined with a lot of the prices being charged for autographs, and all of the recent run ins with the law by pro football players has really started to make me cynical about a lot of these players.

Then along comes Jason Simmons. Who, you might ask? Unless you are a Houston Texans’ fan, you might or might not know who he is. He is Houston’s safety, a nine year veteran in the NFL. But when running back Ahman Green came to the team in the offseason between the 2006 and 2007 season, he apparently approached Simmons to try and negotiate a deal for the #30.

The surprising, and encouraging answer that Simmons gave was that he wanted Green to make a down payment on a house. Not for him, but for a single parent family in the area. Awesome idea. And even better, Green even offered to make the first year’s payments on the loan.

So as tons of fans, including me at sometimes, have called one of athletes who perform for football teams in the National Football League spoiled, overpaid, millionaire cry babies, etc, now a good example of giving back comes along.

Maybe there is hope for the NFL. Maybe Commissioner Goodell will have ultimate success in curbing the bad behavior. And maybe more of these highly paid football performers will realize that they have been given a real gift and it wouldn’t be a bad thing to give some of that gift back to those that are not as fortunate.