Wow, I had no idea you were the ONE who could read minds and hearts. Ruggs was a good kid, and I stress kid, who made a horrendous mistake. Jail might not be a bad thing for him, but how about showing a little mercy to a kid who came from nothing and now has to return there?
Just because he was a talented player and made a bunch of money doesn’t make him a monster. It makes him a kid who made, literally, the worst decision of his life. He knows tragedy from his childhood. Because of a dumb, terrible mistake on his part, he gets to know it again. He gets to carry the guilt of that woman’s death as well as the punishment of jail time. Why vilify him?
Carr is right. He needs love; not judgment or hatred. He screwed up about as bad as human can. When you screw up, do you want love and compassion or are you content with hatred and judgment being piled on you by people you don’t know?
Then again, we all need love. Every day we screw up (not this bad, maybe) but we need people to love who we are while not loving what we did. Maybe give it a try.
There is not excuse for this horrible event. Sadly, this is the dilemma of kids who have been expected to excel in athletics all of their lives. Many times, their talent is their only worth to family and friends. A twenty-two year old black kid from Montgomery Alabama makes the big time, gets a sixteen million dollar contract and buys a custom corvette along with a lot of celebration booze. I am betting it is the first car he has ever owned and didn’t have much driving experience or life experience in the first place. It is a recipe for disaster and the NFL sets the stage for enslaving these kids to recruiters and lots of money, then they throw them to the wind.