NEW : Cincinnati Shocked by Chris Henry’s Death

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To describe the life of former Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chris Henry as turbulent is to engage in understatement. Henry’s brief NFL career featured five arrests, three NFL suspensions and a host of second chances. At age 26, Henry seemed finally to be straightening things out off the field while contributing steadily on the field before suffering a season-ending injury in Week 9. On Wednesday, news broke that a domestic dispute with his fiancee somehow led to Henry falling or being thrown from the back of a pickup truck and suffering serious injuries. Henry died of those injuries on Thursday morning, leaving Bengals fans and teammates to puzzle over the confusing legacy of his short, troubled life.

Reuters

Chris Henry, seen during a playoff game against Pittsburgh in this 2006 file photo.

There surely will be more to read about Henry and his strange story in days to come, but for the time being we have to substitute emotional response for context. “I saw a tall, lean, quiet, kid who wanted to get better as a football player and was doing all the right things to make it happen,” the Cincinnati Enquirer’s John Erardi writes. “A kid.”

Longtime Bengals beat writer Chick Ludwig writes at Cincinnati.com that he’s having a hard time maintaining journalistic detachment this morning. “I’ve never come across an athlete as talented or as troubled as Chris Henry,” Ludwig writes.

Garey will have more on this topic tomorrow.

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Only the most ardent and blinkered of college-football loyalists are under the illusion that their coaches of choice are particularly admirable people. There are exceptions to the general rule, of course, but for the most part football coaches — leaders of men and master strategists though they might be — are as flawed as any/everyone else. While it’s not necessarily surprising to hear about college-football coaches being brutish or churlish, the scandal currently surrounding University of South Florida coach Jim Leavitt stands out. That’s partially because of the allegations against Leavitt — that he throttled and twice struck in the face a sophomore walk-on named Joel Miller at halftime of a Nov. 21 game — but more notably for the way the story has changed shape in recent days.

Former Tampa Tribune reporter Brett McMurphy based the FanHouse story that broke the whole thing on quotes from five eyewitnesses as well as Miller’s father and Miller’s high-school coach. The story raised some eyebrows because of Leavitt’s alleged bad behavior and what McMurphy described as the coach’s subsequent attempt to snuff the story out.

Getty Images

Jim Leavitt

The confusing part came later, as Miller and his father — who, remember, was a quoted source in the original story — disavowed the whole thing. (Leavitt has always denied any wrongdoing.) On Wednesday, McMurphy reported that Miller’s brother was not entirely willing to toe the family’s new line on the incident, and stuck to a version of the incident in which Leavitt was decidedly the villain.

So, what actually happened? We may never know, in large part since Miller’s football life depends on him continuing to stick to his latest story. In the Tampa Tribune, Martin Fennelly hopes that the truth in this strange tale will out. “There needs to be a real investigation here,” Fennelly writes. “There are coaches, bigger names, longer legends, who have been fired for doing what Leavitt is accused of doing. … It’s hard to imagine something more serious than a coach bullying his players. It’s hard to imagine why any university would want such a coach, or why any parent would send their son to such a university.”

Elsewhere in the Tribune, Joe Henderson decries South Florida’s stonewalling on the story. “The longer everyone waits for a resolution, the more likely that positions will be hardened,”Henderson writes. “The damage to the football program and university, while already substantial, will get worse. Then when USF finally does have something to say, you wonder if anyone will be listening anymore.”

In the St. Petersburg Times, Gary Shelton argues that only a thorough inquiry into the charges can repair the damage to Leavitt’s reputation. “At this point, only a vigorous, determined investigation will convince everyone that Leavitt’s side of the story is the truth,” Shelton writes. “And at this point, only such a truth can clear Leavitt’s name.”

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The Fix picks the NFL’s Thursday game, ahead of its Friday picks for the weekend:

It’s a nice debate to face: Should you turn your perfect regular season over to the scout-teamers and headset-wearers while resting the stars for the postseason, or gun for the win? The New Orleans Saints could be mired in their own Cajun-inflected version of this debate if they keep winning and clinch home-field advantage in the playoffs over the Minnesota Vikings. In Indy, the debate has arrived early, because the rest of the AFC didn’t put up much of a fight for the No. 1 seed.

Indianapolis (-3) at Jacksonville: Indianapolis hasn’t lost yet this season, as you might’ve heard. But Jacksonville might be the more admirable team in this game. The Jaguars’ roster is loaded with rookies, their home stadium is regularly half-empty and their fate seemingly was sealed before the season’s first coin flip. But the Jags have worked their way into the playoff picture by beating teams worse than them while losing to more talented teams with such predictability that it’s hard not to admire the extent to which they have fulfilled — if never really surpassed — their potential. The bad news for Jacksonville is that the Colts are also playing up to their potential, and are by far the better club — and one seemingly inclined to follow the pundits’ decree and play their stars down the stretch, record be damned. The good news? The Jags are officially this year’s NFL working-class heroes. That counts for something, right?

Pick: David: Indianapolis, Garey: Indianapolis, Al Toonie: Jacksonville

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That the NFL has a head-injury problem is news only to those who went out of their way not to know it over the last decade or so. But while the NFL has acknowledged and addressed that problem recently — breaking from a years-long “more research needed” slow-walk that was impressive even by congressional standards — the National Hockey League has generally ducked its own concussion issue. In the San Francisco Chronicle, Ray Ratto suggests that the NHL address its serious and seriously under-addressed brain-trauma problem as soon as possible.

“People are in just that sort of mood on skull shots — even football fans, who grew up worshiping them as the highest form of entertainment, are getting the message,” Ratto writes. “The NHL needs not to get the message, it needs to give it, and it needs to give it with a knee right to the nethers, so that no owner, general manager, coach, player or fan can mistake it for anything other than what it should be.”

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So much sports journalism is about reaction and overreaction: trashing players, calling for the heads of coaches or GMs, over and over and over. While that stuff can be entertaining sometimes, none of us would be following sports — or reading the Fix, most likely — if the bigger narratives of sports didn’t matter to us at least a little bit.

While ESPN’s 24-hour news cycle does much to keep the more unsatisfying elements of the sports discourse front and center with its ginned-up debates and facile controversies, it’s worth taking a moment to credit ESPN.com’s E-Ticket, a unique Web feature that allows ESPN’s stable of writers to stretch out and write long features on stories that don’t fit within the instantaneousness that defines ESPN. Wright Thompson’s fascinating story on Jimmy Robinson, a boxer who fought Muhammad Ali before facing some much scarier demons later in life, is a fine example of just how good E-Ticket can be. It’s a great, sobering read.

source :

http://blogs.wsj.com/dailyfix/2009/12/17/cincinnati-shocked-by-chris-henrys-death/