Sick of ESPN moralists

Yesterday when the Cowboys DE Greg Hardy returned to practice after serving his 4 game suspension for violating the NFL Conduct Policy in relation to his domestic violence case that occurred last year. Sure enough here comes Mike and Mike talking about Hardy and they, and especially ESPN's version of Oprah Jamele Hill, went on about how heinous Hardy is and he did an interview in which he made a comment about the suspension in a joking fashion, which probably wasn't well adviced but it was an innocent comment, and they started in on how Hardy wasn't showing remorse for his case. Puh-lease. ESPN and Jamele Hill in particular SHUT UP! ESPN and it has been on Mike and Mike and any showcase featuring Hill they have always brought up that Hardy was CONVICTED of domestic abuse. Technically they are right but if you look past the statement to the facts it's a pretty a hollow statement.
Fact 1. Hardy is the one who made the call to 9-1-1 saying his girlfriend was beating on him with her shoe.
Fact 2. After the arrest and the statements made on the scene vs what Hardy's girlfriend testified to in the trial had a lot of discrepancies.
Fact 3. The trial was a bench trial meaning the judge was the final say in the proceeding. No jury so she decided the guilt or innocence and decided the punishment.
Fact 4. The judge in the trial was woman who you could rightly assume her natural tendency was to be on the female's side in DV cases.
Fact 5. The judge being so incensed about the heinousness of Hardy's guilt she found him guilty and sentenced him to 6 month in jail which she suspended and 18 month probation.
Fact 6. She had minimal bruising according to what she testified he did to her.
Fact 7. Hardy appealed his sentence and on the date of the trial the girlfriend never showed up.
Fact 8. The trial could have continued without the girlfriend and just used her testimony from the first trial but, because of the above mentioned discrepancies between her statement when Hardy was arrested and the testimony at the trial the prosecution felt that there wasn't enough substance to continue with the trial.
Fact 9. The conviction was overturned on appeal and Hardy's record cleared.
Fact 10. Largely on the tail of the Ray Rice domestic violence debacle and peer pressure, especially by ESPN, the NFL suspended Hardy 10 games for violating the NFL Code of Conduct Policy.
Fact 11. On appeal Hardy's suspension was reduced to 4 games.
Fact 12. Hardy could have sued the NFL to remove the suspension entirely but he saw the crap with the Tom Brady-deflategate mess and he didn't want to become that sort of distraction to the Cowboys so he accepted his suspension. BTW, if Hardy had sued the NFL by everything I've read about the case he would have won.

That is, in a nutshell, the Greg Hardy case and why ESPN chooses to still berate Hardy I have no idea. The choice of words by Hardy in the interview linked below could have been better but if you watch he is not being disrespectful of the situation he actually says he isn't talking about what happened in the past. The media at the interview tried to get Hardy to talk about the previous 18 months in a variety of ways and all I saw was a guy not wanting to talk about his legal troubles and If you listen he did talk about his growth since becoming a Dallas Cowboy. Good interview. As Sgt Hulka told Psycho in the movie Stripes when Psycho was threatening to kill everyone, "Lighten up, Francis." I say to ESPN's moralistic front, "Lighten up, ESPN (especially you, Jamele Hill).

This is getting ridiculous. This persecution of Greg Hardy is way out of hand. First Fox Sports' Terry Bradshaw goes on TV and says that Hardy should be banned from the NFL for hitting a woman. This is a guy who obviously has not looked at the facts of Hardy's case. I saw a tweet yesterday from a guy named Adam Kurkjian who is a writer for the Boston Globe who said there are people in college, pros and any walk of life that don't deserve a second chance and Greg Hardy was one of those non-deserving people. Somebody challenged him on twitter and the guy said, "If you want to defend a guy who smacks around women you go ahead, hoss." Now I have a problem with a Boston yankee calling someone "hoss". I also have a problem with people who feel like nobody deserves a second chance. Hardy has no history of abuse of women other than the incident last spring and the whole issue was clouded in mystery. Sounds like Mr Kurkjian needs a lesson in Christian forgiveness. Wasn't a very influential figure in the Bible quoted as saying when the people of a town were going to stone a woman for being an adulteress this guy stopped the mob by saying something to the effect that if there was somebody in the crowd who was without sin cast the first stone. Needless to say there were no stones cast that day. It's bad enough to be a moralist but when you are a moralist who doesn't have all the facts, or chooses to ignore the facts, then you have a very dangerous situation. I think Kurkjian, who undoubtedly follows the Patriots threw his 2 cents in because he didn't Tawm Brady get his ass kicked by Hardy.

I whole heartedly agree with Eagle Eye, these clowns at ESPN, like the regular media, are a bunch of PC pin-heads. I really don't care what you think, especially when you distort the facts. Just give me the scores, the game highlights, and interviews - not your opinions. You would think ESPN would try to downplay the negative stories in sports just to promote more fans, thus more viewers. And I am officially sick of them showing at least one game of every Red Sox - Yankees series on national TV - both of those teams have huge local TV contracts for their fans.