A reader pointed me to a huge article in the Seattle Times about Jerramy Stevens and his legal problems. Did I mention this article is huge? It starts when Stevens was in high school and covers, in sometimes graphic detail, the rape charges, the hit and run, the DUIs, and what happened behind the scenes to get Stevens the lightest punishments possible or, in some cases, no punishment at all. It paints Stevens as a real piece of shit and the King County prosecutors as tools of the University of Washington and the Seattle Seahawks.

What puzzles me about the article is the timing. It seems rather convenient for the local Seattle newspaper to really dig deep into this story and expose all the dirt after Stevens has left the Seahawks and can no longer benefit the area. And if you read the comments, you'll notice a number of people accuse the paper of being biased against the University of Washington and using this story to undermine support to provide public funding for a new Huskies stadium. They could have run an in-depth story about football players getting favors from the government at any point while Stevens was there. I don't know anything about Seattle except that it rains a lot and that's where Frasier is from. But I have seen biased reporting before and know how it can be used to sway public opinion. And this feels like a story with an agenda.

The story sets up the prosecutor's office as a group of boosters who will go to great illegal lengths to protect Husky players, especially during a Rose Bowl run, but doesn't support that accusation with non-football evidence. The story focuses mainly on the rape charges and how they were eventually dropped due to a suspicious decision by the prosecutor's office. But how many other rape charges throughout the years were dropped due to lack of evidence, rightly or wrongly? What did the prosecutor's "decline" letter say in those cases? How many of the rape cases that are dropped come from college students? Are these simply cases of college girls regretting their decisions, or are there actual assaults taking place? Something may be wrong in the Seattle legal system, but before you make the assumption that it is confined to athletes, maybe you should cast a wider net. It would be a much bigger and more important story if rape cases are going unchecked because the District Attorney is a chauvinist and not just a Husky fan. If their goal was to convince me that Stevens was a rapist, they came up short because now I'm pretty sure I'm not hearing the whole story despite the size of the article.

This isn't to say that Stevens isn't still a piece of shit or that football players don't get preferential treatment. Of course he is and of course they do. And it's wrong. But people, in general, are greedy and if there is money to be made, they are willing to overlook a lot in order to make it. Regarding Stevens specifically, Bruce Allen must have known about everything before he signed Stevens to his contract last year and I'm a big believer in second chances and redemption. Allen promised to give Stevens a second sixth chance and, to his credit, he didn't get into any additional trouble for a whole year. Going on that alone, Allen has no reason to not re-sign him for 2008. As far as my opinion of him goes, some of what I read that he admitted to (or that the evidence is too overwhelming to deny) makes me wonder if he can ever be redeemed. Stomping on an unconscious kid's face? Repeated DUIs despite being in treatment? Football players don't have to pass the "Would I let my daughter date them?" test in order for me to approve of their addition to my favorite team's roster. I just have to believe that they are not fucking scumbags or, if they have been fucking scumbags in the past, that they have learned their lesson and will not be fucking scumbags anymore. I hope Stevens falls into that latter category because, again, I would like to believe in his redemption as a decent person. Time will tell. If he's beyond hope, he won't be able to keep himself out of the headlines for long. And if he screws himself out of a job with the Buccaneers because he fucked up again, there's no way any other team gives him a shot.