It’s beyond embarrassing. It was past that long ago, probably around the third or fourth arrest....or Chris Henry’s second. The Bengals now officially have more player arrests this season that wins.
When rookie cornerback, Jonathan Joseph was busted early Monday morning on a drug charge, the Bengals officially went past their win total for this season. In case you missed it, and the Florence cops didn't, Joseph was traveling with a female companion on Route 42 in Northern Kentucky very early today. The car was weaving, she was driving. When they asked Joseph to exit the vehicle, the cops say they smelled a strong scent of marijuana. Suspicion became a charge, when Joseph, according to the police, told them he had a bag of weed in a back pack he was toting. Making this story a complete mess, the back pack had a Super Bowl logo on it. Welcome to the Bengals in the new millenium. You ain’t nothing unless you got an arrest record.
Oh how I love them, let me count the ways. Chris Henry, the record holder with three arrests in four states over six months, Eric Steinbach, Deltha O’Neal, Frostee Rucker, Reggie McNeal, AJ Nicholson, the year long suspended Odell Thurman. And for a little garnishing, how about Ahmad Brooks who was bounced off the University of Virginia football team for allegedly testing positive for weed. And then, to celebrate the new year, the Bengals go out and sign a player who spent close to 300-days in jail for assault and theft while in college. And today, Jospeh and "the amazing techno-color trip through Florence".
These are our men in stripes...or orange jump suits.
There can be only one of two things going on here. Either the Bengals don’t bother to do serious back ground checks on the people they’re employing these days,or they simply don’t care about the type of people they hire.
They may assume, and sadly, rightly so, that winning trumps whatever else happens to a professional football team, off the field. It doesn’t matter what transgressions an NFL player has, all is forgiven with a timely TD catch or a game saving sack. Just listen to the cheering or look in the stands at the fans wearing the player's jersey. In Cincinnati, chances are, it’s the number of a player who’s been to lock up.
More later today, as this story developes
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