Argos take gamble, again
Courtesy Globe and Mail:
For all of the talk of character and chemistry and intangibles, there’s a dirty little secret that applies to all professional sports — and especially to professional football.
Talented players with side issues, bad/confused/damaged people who also happen to be good athletes, will be tolerated precisely until they’re more trouble than they’re worth.
When someone has marketable abilities, you can bet they will be given every opportunity to succeed, even if those abilities come with baggage, with a checkered past or present.
And when someone with clear, world-class skills completely falls through the cracks, when there’s no one interested any more, you can be pretty sure either that those skills have started to fade or more likely that the baggage has become just too heavy to bear.
In that light, consider the newest member of the Toronto Argonauts, David Boston.
The wide receiver is a former first-round draft choice who once led the NFL in receiving yards. He is 29, which might be slightly on the downside for someone playing his position, but certainly wouldn’t indicate in itself that he’s over the hill.
Boston also comes with a rather colourful history linking him to both performance-enhancing and recreational drugs and most recently to criminal charges arising from a domestic dispute (somehow, in their extensive background checks before signing him, the Argos missed that last part).
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