Wait - are you saying that the fact that these events are public record (for everyone) is wrong? If that is what you are saying, I completely and totally disagree. This stuff is public record for good reason, and I definitely don't think public figures should get additional privacy because they are public figures. Did you know that I've been sued, and if you've paid enough attention here on BigSoccer you can find the entire history of the lawsuit and all kinds of personal details about my life just by knowing where to look on the internet? Sure, in my case it was a frivolous lawsuit, filed by "serial plantiffs", that has since been "settled" out-of-court, but what if I had been sued multiple times for legitimate reasons - don't you think you'd like to know that if you were entering into business with me, for example? If you are saying that these things are often blown out of proportion when it comes to athletes vs. Joe Schmoe, I agree. We are entitled to know. I don't think it matters most of the time.
If nothing else. The Daily Reporter has every bit of everybody's affairs and more. Filed bankruptcy? Get sued? It's all published. The Columbus Dispatch carries foreclosures in the classifieds. Also tax liens. There every day for all the world to see. And apparently myshap hasn't spent any time in a small town. As those of us who have can testify, the local rag fills it's "Police Calls" column every day with every arrest, every traffic stop and every call the local cops made. Somebody call the police because you were beating your wife? It's there in black and white and everyone in town will see it. Your kid get nabbed shoplifting or throwing stones at windows someplace? The whole town will be talking about it by noon. It's only in big towns, where the volume is too great, that this stuff is not published for public consumption every day. But there's a bigger point here, which myshap doesn't seem to grasp: When you are a "public figure" - by personal choice, mind you - then people "know" you. When you get arrested, people recognize your name. It's true of business executives, actors, church board members, board of education members, youth baseball coaches, elected officials, and athletes down to and including the quarterback for your local high school team. If you get caught breaking the law and/or screwing up, people will know. It is part and parcel of the deal. If you don't want this to be the cae, then either a) quit or b) DON'T SCREW UP. Now, if you want to get all outraged about privacy invasion (not to get political here, just making a point so chill) the New York Times has hired some lawyers to try and get Supreme Court nominee John Robert's children's ADOPTION PAPERS unsealed so they can find their birth mothers in Latin America. Now freind, I don't give a damn where you fall in the political spectrum of things, if that sort of thing doesn't absolutely piss you off then you need to go buy a soul. But that's a long ways from talking about some young athlete who got pulled over for speeding and got into a hassle with the cops. He'll get over it, maybe even learn the consequences of his action - public embarassment being one of them - and move along with his life without permanent scars. There are outrageous privacy violations in this world, myshap, but Edson's traffic record sure ain't one of them. Grow the hell up.
So did anyone ask Eddie Johnson, one of Edson's good friends, what he thought about his boy getting a DUI? Just wondering.
How in the world could you get I don't believe it should be public record from what I wrote? I'm clearly talking about putting it in the Sports section of the Dispatch. Hence the sentence about there already being a section for arrests in the Dispatch. I'm asking is OVI something you really want to read in the sports section anyway when you can go to the Metro section and read it there. I'm saying fans today think they are entitled to know everything about an athlete. Go to Bucknuts. It's gotten to the point that it's even trival ******** like where an athlete eats for dinner and what they eat. Then they come up with lines like I mean if he's eating a bunch of fatty foods doesn't that affect his play and shouldn't we know about it and put a food chart of everything he ate for the last month on a message board. And that's not too far off from the Crew board considering a month ago there was a thread about where and when the Crew players go to drink. Then the real fun starts when they do something wrong. It's like dogs ripping at a carcus. And then it becomes their entitlement to hear every last sorted detail. Then not only do they want him to pay through the State, they want the athlete's employer to make him pay as well just to prove some point. What point, I don't know? Perhaps that their life is so sorry they have to revel in the missary of others. I'm wonding why it's more important to Sandon that MLS was ignored by the media then the fact a guy was picked up for OVI. I'm wonder why this is a topic of conversation a week latter as well. Edson was picked up for OVI and OVI is bad. What more is there to be said on the topic? And Bill I'm not getting outraged about privacy invasion, although I'm in complete agreement with Fid, if you want to see Edson's public record go to the website it doesn't need to be posted on BS. It's not like it's not easily accessable. Not that it will tell you much of anything since all your looking at is a couple word phrases that anyone can minipulate to mean anything they want.
SInce you called me out, I'll answer. As a consumer, I have a right to know as much as is available on how I choose to spend my money. As a father, I damn sure want to know if a guy who could end up being a role model, and thus an influence, on my son - like, say a goal-scorer he watches on TV - is a good citizen or breaking the law or what not. So, yeah, I want to read about it in the sports pages. Why? Because I want to know which of these guys I want to point out to my son as someone he should try and emulate. I don't expect the players to be perfect, but when they run afoul of the law, especially something like drunk driving that is a real problem with teen drivers, I want to know so I can make sure my kid doesn't totally idolize that player.
I read this: as "then" meaning the Metro section, and "now" meaning the Sports section. I realized I might be misinterpreting, so that's why I asked. If the item is one of public record, they are. I just think that most of the time it (ie, "what the athlete did") doesn't matter. Not much. Unless he does it again, then we might have a pattern. Some people might argue that his large number of tickets already indicates a pattern, and I'd have to say it's a fairly convincing argument. Now, does that pattern matter? I don't know, probably not (yet). It clearly did matter when it came to Maurice Clarett.
BTW, any word on the potential suspension that McCullers told the Dispatch he was awaiting a decision on based on an evaluation of the facts?
Actually it would be entertaining to have a Jerry Springer show type throwdown in the thread - 2 overweight women trying to pull each other's hair out. Or something like that.
I'm sorry, but that doesn't make a bit of sense to me. Regardless of how you or anyone feels about the "public right to know" angle here, closing this thread will serve no purpose. If he appears in court today, the result of the hearing will be out by evening, and someone will start a thread on it. Guaranteed. Then if the team GM and/or the league hands out a disciplinary measure, that will be reported as well. Another thread. (Question to those who think this topic is "non-soccer" and thus irrelevant to this forum: if the Commissioner of Major League Soccer or the General Manager of the Crew hands down a punishment of some kind to a player in this situation, does it THEN become "soccer-related"? If so, then how is the potential for such action NOT "soccer-related". You guys are just completely, 100% wrong on this) In any case. closing this thread will not, nor should it, close the discussion. What it WILL do is engender many more threads on the topic. Personally, I don't care. Whatever happens with this case WILL be discussed in this forum, be it in one thread or 50. And I doubt our beloved mods are going to go on full-time "stomp out any thread mentioning Edson Buddle's arrest" mode. No one really has the stomach for the chaos THAT will immediately create. But I suppose at that point Krypto, myshap and Brook will demand that the people starting up new threads on closed topics receive yellow and then red cards for doing so. That's the only way that kind of thing ends. And if indeed that IS what you envision, I'll be happy to take the case to Huss RIGHT NOW rather than wait until the forum explodes into the cacaphony of hate and spite and anger it was a few years ago. It'll be interesting to see you explain to the Admins why the potential for a player to be suspended from MLS action should be a forbidden topic on BigSoccer. Not gonna need Clarence Darrow to win THAT argument. Bottom line: not worth it. If you are among those who don't want to read this stuff here, then DON'T FOOKING READ IT. Just move along. But censoring it simply won't work. Just my opinion.
I think it is still open for discussion. Maybe the thread title should be changed to something like "Edson Buddle on/off field discussion" for practicality; after all that is what we want to do in the long run. Like it or not, Edson was supposed to be the go to guy up front this season. We are now left a somewhat questionable primary front line of Knox, Glen, Wolyniec and Sutton. Injury and performance took Buddle off the field to begin with. Now there is a problem off the field that might impact the team this season and perhaps seasons to come. Furthermore, any discussions of privacy are way beyond the scope of this thread and Bigsoccer. It's a global problem. It's more of a "what's in bad taste" problem within our scope. Is publishing he fact he was arrested for OVI and that he has a court date wrong? I think not. Is publishing an entire history, directions to obtain information, and where the guy lives wrong? Probably so, and oversteps the bounds. One other thing to discuss is the relative silence from the Crew and Edson at this point. Both are probably waiting for the ruling before going into public reaction mode.
It's not getting closed. It's open for discussion...as it should be. If things go off-topic or in a direction that is inappropriate those posts will be deleted.
I had to chuckle watching the Quakes-Crew game when they listed Buddle as being out with "Achilles tendonitis." Couldn't help but think there's a correlation between that and his driving record, like, does he have a bad heel he drives fast or does he have a bad driving record beccause he has a bad heel?