NFL Football 101: Run Up the Field, Score Touchdowns, Break Several Laws...PROFIT

Football season is just a few months away, which is a major check mark in the WIN column of my life. I am a huge fan of football. Of course, I have to root for my home town Chiefs, even though I know they'll be light years away from Super Bowl victory for yet another season. Winning the Super Bowl is serious business though, folks, and being a nationally recognized "good team" is even harder. The Chiefs of recent years have not been either. Although this pretty much blows for the die hard fans, it's actually quite a comfortable place for a rebuilding sports organization; one that prides itself in excellence of character and considers itself a cornerstone of sports history. This is why I like the Chiefs. No matter how agonizing a defeat is, they're always willing to dust off their cleats and start new next Sunday. That's the kind of football I like to see. The kind of football that's about character of heart, and at least seemingly not so much about the money or the talent.

While this may sound like a perfect formula for a morally ethical franchise, it isn't exactly a great formula for winning in the NFL. Being a contender in any professional sport involves inflated egos and raw talent over excellence of character almost nine times out of ten. Rarely, an extremely talented and versatile player is also a locker room leader and supporter, but this happens almost never in the modern era. Then there are the problem children, who while extremely talented on the field, are borderline retarded off the field.

Ben Roethlesberger is a perfect example. I personally believe that he's one of the most talented players to ever play quarterback, but I also think that he's a major douche and a moron. He has uncanny, natural ability to maneuver in the pocket and make split second decisions, but he also molests women. How can the NFL look past that? Well, like I said, he wins games. He's a gold mine and can sell overpriced jerseys for a legendary football team. He's the face of an organization. While his image is forever tainted by these accusations of something horrible that he's almost certainly guilty of, people can still look past his wrongs.

Look at Yankees baseball star Alex Rodriguez. The dude cheated at the game of baseball. He took steroids, lied about it, then later admitted it. Does he still play for the Yankees? Hell yes he does. He's one of the best in the game. And as we all know, the path to Cooperstown cuts right through the house that Ruth built. Will he be inducted into the Hall of Fame? I don't know. Maybe. But that doesn't really matter. He still plays a game that everyone knows he cheated at. How is that okay? In the eyes of the organization, anything is permissible if it means more money.

And I'm not saying that my precious Chiefs are even above that. They held onto Larry Johnson until he was useless as both a football player and as locker room resident. It took a public racial slur, a fan uprising, and poor execution on the field for them to finally pull the plug. Notice that without the latter of these reasons, the two former reasons for cutting LJ wouldn't have held water to the organization. While that doesn't make their decision wrong, it certainly speaks to the importance of talent to football teams. Some teams will cling to it no matter how awfully a player behaves off the field. And keeping LJ for as long as the Chiefs did was motivated by pure desperation. My belief, however, is that desperation should never motivate a team to keep anyone -- no matter how talented -- in the face of scandal. A team is almost always better off without a thorn in their side. Especially a thorn as big and whiny as Larry Johnson.

It seems as though these scandals taking place off the field have begun to escalate, and in some cases even worsen. Last year's loss of Chris Henry was particularly devastating. Then of course there was the Roethlesberger fiasco. The Michael Vick dogfighting ring incident was especially sickening. Adam "Pacman" Jones is still in hot water. Plaxico Burress is still in prison. A defensive legend, Lawrence Taylor, was recently outed as a sex offender.

Even with all of these seemingly mounting scandals, teams still continue to draft players with questionable character in exchange for their ability to leave jockstraps scattered on the AstroTurf. Because hey, the better the team, the better the profit. The bigger the scandal, the bigger the publicity. It makes me sick sometimes just thinking about the avarice, and yet I cannot help but be excited about the game I love. I prefer to think that this is only human of me. After all, we live to see ferocious competition between the greatest of the greats. Are we really so different than the Romans? Do we turn a blind eye to the destruction and loss of lives in the name of sport? I think we do sometimes. But not every sports legend killed his wife, and not every team holds on to destructive people.

I'm glad at least for that. I love the game of football, and I wish that character overrided talent more often than not. But that doesn't sell tickets. Human joysticks sell tickets.