Green's Green

UPDATE 2: Last thing I'm saying about it. Well, I'm not saying it, but I'm recommending what someone else said. Clay Travis' piece on the matter has drawn some Facebook criticisms, but I'm with it for most of the way. On a personal level, I like this quote:

Put yourself in the student-athlete's shoes. He's sitting in a dorm room without extra money to hit the movie theater or McDonald's. Meanwhile, he's got an old jersey in his place -- a jersey, mind you, that he sees countless people on campus walking around in all day -- and someone is willing to give him $1,000 for that old jersey. Might you be tempted to sell that jersey? Hell, I would. And if you say you wouldn't, it's probably because you've never been in a position where you needed any money for anything.

And for far-reaching reasons, I like this one:

That's because players like Green are bound by NFL rules to sit on college campuses until they've completed at least three years since finishing high school. So what if Green would have been a first-round pick last year after his sophomore season -- which he would have -- you're contractually obligated to risk everything for another year on campus. This entire situation must seem like a bad dream. You are the only person on the planet who can't make money off your talents.

True. In the end, I know the rule's the rule, but it sounds like the NCAA is doing some "interpretation" here. They did that with Masoli, too, and had to go back on their decision, so maybe UGA can win their appeal. At least Green was honest about what happened; remember Dez Bryant? He lied in his inquiry and got tossed for the whole season.

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UPDATE: It's looking like a FOUR game suspension for A.J.Green. So, selling a jersey garners more punishment than a hit-and-run. Apparently the jersey was sold to someone who had connections to an agent, though, so there's that. I hope there's more to this - A LOT more - since Marcell Dareus only got two games for a similar situation, Ealey got one game for a worse offense, and Masoli plays on in Oxford.

Doc Saturday has some insight.
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It broke yesterday that the reason A.J. Green couldn't play on Saturday was because he sold a game jersey. Wow. I though it stemmed from some illegal agent contact...and apparently, it still might in a lingering investigation. Anyway, here's TSK's write-up of A.J. Jersey-gate as well as a few other SEC oddities. I hope Green can play Saturday. But more than anything I hope the decision comes from the NCAA soon, so if it is a 'no,' then we can get our game plan together. Also, if it is just the jersey thing, then we need to rethink our punishment paradigm. By all accounts, Green is a good kid who sold his own property. He broke no law...but he did commit an NCAA infraction. And in their eyes, that's worse. The rules committee can still force him to sit another game, and worse, they refuse to reach a conclusion, which hampers a team's ability to move on. All this while players who were convicted of drug possession and robbery play freely after being kicked out of one school and transferring. Cool, NCAA, cool.