Sick of ESPN moralists

[eagle eye]

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).