American Football: seahawks koren robinson suspended 4 games

another rocket scientist.....

Seattle receiver suspended four games by NFL office

By TIM KORTE, AP Sports Writer
November 22, 2004
KIRKLAND, Wash. (AP) -- Seattle Seahawks receiver Koren Robinson was suspended without pay Monday for the next four games for violating the NFL's substance-abuse policy.

Robinson will sit out home games against Buffalo and Dallas, as well as road trips to Minnesota and the New York Jets. He is eligible to return for a Dec. 26 home game against Arizona.

Jerry Rice, who started and had three receptions for 86 yards and a touchdown in Sunday's 24-17 win over Miami, will take over at Robinson's position.


``Jerry will move into the split end position, and off we go,'' coach Mike Holmgren said.

Robinson also sat out the Miami game, but Holmgren said that was punishment for violating undisclosed team rules and had no relation to the NFL suspension. Robinson wasn't available for comment after the game.

Holmgren acknowledged Robinson traveled to New York last week on an off day for Seahawks players to appeal a possible suspension.

This isn't Robinson's first brush with trouble.

The ninth overall pick of the 2001 draft, Robinson was suspended for a game at Arizona last season after missing a team meeting. In February 2003, he was arrested outside a bar in Raleigh, N.C., for failure to disperse.

Holmgren has joked in the past that he installed digital clocks throughout the building at Seahawks headquarters to help Robinson report to meetings on time.

``It's very disappointing to see wonderful potential lost like that,'' Holmgren said Monday. ``Is he going to rebound off this? Yes, but this is a missed time. You just want the lights to go on for some of these young guys, and have them understand how fortunate they are to be doing what they're doing.''

Robinson has slumped in his fourth NFL season, catching 31 passes for 495 yards with two touchdowns. He also has been plagued by dropped passes in the past two seasons -- a recurrent problem for Seattle's receivers.

Robinson appeared poised for a breakout after his second NFL season, when he started 16 games and had 78 receptions for 1,240 yards receiving, ranking second to Steve Largent's franchise-record 1,287 yards.

Holmgren was asked if Robinson stands on shaky ground with him.

``I love the guy. I guess I've got a weakness for him,'' Holmgren said. ``This is going to sound a little corny, but even at the professional level I think ... we can still have a positive impact on our players off the field. I hope we can.''

Robinson is expected to be seen at team headquarters during his suspension.

Under a change adopted last spring at the urging of Holmgren and others, the NFL Management Council and NFL Players Association agreed to allow suspended players to work out individually at team headquarters. Previously, players were banned from team facilities for the duration of their suspensions. The change gives players valuable access to the weight room as well as the club's counseling and personnel services.

``I thought we were pushing them right into, or back into, the area where they had a chance to get into trouble,'' Holmgren said. ``I'm glad it's this way. I'm sorry we lose him, but I'm glad we can keep him around here.''

Just another shame...

perfectly said, so many athletes have everything, and they seem to want to throw it away on useless things.

thought i would post this column from today seattle pi....i think this pretty much sums it all up

Athletes no longer answer for misdeeds

By ART THIEL
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

The sorting, collating and evaluation of misdeeds by sports figures has lately required forklifts, spreadsheets, and liquid-hydrogen fuel to keep the investigations moving.

Just in the past week, the NBA fracas in Detroit, the college football brawl between South Carolina and Clemson, and Seattle's own little problem, Seahawks wide receiver Koren Robinson, have inspired sweeping generalizations about the teams, sports and the social fabric.

Many conclude, more or less, that American culture is a runaway 18-wheeler that has blown its jake brakes and is tootling straight to hell.

As an ardent believer in the power of coincidence, I am less inclined to toss my hands in the air and suggest that connecting the sporting dots will spell the word "doom."

After all, players have fought with fans before, college footballers have rumbled before, and just guessing here, but Robinson is not the first athlete or citizen to have smoked dope. Precedence does not excuse the current misdeeds, but it does offer the notion that since we've seen it all before, there is no recent evidence that we are any closer to cliff's edge.

Which doesn't mean there isn't a connection. The issue that ties these matters together is one that some readers of this column might have seen mentioned before: The fade of accountability as a virtue.

Apart from the startling theater in their actions, what gets me is that Ron Artest and his fellow NBA goofs, as well as the Clemson and South Carolina clowns and the Seahawks' King Knucklehead, have zero sense of responsibility to their teammates.

If they were tennis players, golfers, swimmers or track athletes, similar misdeeds will reflect poorly on the greater enterprise, but serious consequences would fall only to the individuals.

But the actions of Artest and his teammates have blown up the season for the Indiana Pacers, as well as their fans, staffers and sponsors. At Clemson and South Carolina, the school presidents have pulled their teams from bowl consideration because of the brawl. In Seattle, Robinson's suspension put a tenuous season in further jeopardy, because his replacement, 42-year-old Jerry Rice, is not Robinson at his best.



Yet when reporters encountered Robinson in the locker room this week after the suspensions were announced, he was playfully engaged in a jumping contest with a couple of his teammates, as if nothing had happened. While there is always a danger of making too much of a moment of play, the image underscored a widely held belief around the team and league that Robinson has never gotten "it," isn't getting it and will never get it.

By NFL rules with the union, a four-game suspension means you have to have transgressed three times, whether by use of drugs, not reporting for a drug test, or another behavioral problem that is proscribed in the collective bargaining agreement. In other words, it isn't just one moment's mistake, perhaps excused as youthful indiscretion. A suspended player has to be serial screw-up.

If I were Chad Brown or Grant Wistrom or Walter Jones, I would find a private moment with Robinson and deliver a boot to the man's backside so harshly that he would taste leather. Such an action may indeed have occurred, and if so, good for them. But if it has happened, it's hard to imagine Robinson jacking around in the locker room if he knew how some teammates felt.

Robinson shouldn't even have had the chance to be in the locker room. He should have been banned from all team activities, too. Instead, coach Mike Holmgren in the past offseason spearheaded a change in the rules to allow suspended players to remain around the team.

The theory that being around the team will be more helpful than being out on the street is wrong.

In making three successive mistakes while under team supervision, it's obvious the precious football environment coaches claim will help players did nothing to deter Robinson's misbehavior. The only remaining option for motivation, it would seem, is the player's removal from the atmosphere that was sufficiently indulgent that he thought he could abuse it without consequence.

Now Holmgren and the players must convince Robinson he's done them wrong, while not denying him the privileges and perks of being a professional athlete.

How Holmgren could misunderstand that point is mystifying. Then again, the mistake is hardly unique to him. Nearly all coaches are egocentric enough to think the same way, and nearly all wonder why it doesn't work.

But the misguidedness isn't confined to football coaches. Consider the recent role of the ABC network in reinforcing the disregard of accountability.

In the infamous skit that opened the "Monday Night Football" telecast from Philadelphia, a towel-clad trollop from the cast of "Desperate Housewives" dropped her towel and leaped naked into the arms of star receiver Terrell Owens, who was in uniform and purportedly ready to take the field.

While much was made of the skit's sexuality in front of a TV audience rife with kids, the more serious odiousness was in the words, not the implied sex. The dialogue had Owens at first refusing her advances because he owed his teammates and the city his efforts in the game. But once she dropped her towel, he dropped his resistance, and the frolic was on.

What that dialogue did was reinforce the worst stereotypes of athletes as reckless sexual animals oblivious to anything but self-gratification. As Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy pointed out, it was also racially offensive to him, particularly in light of the Kobe Bryant case.

I'm not sure which was worse: ABC's lame apology that implied it was ignorant of how many ways the skit could be interpreted, or that the network knew exactly the consequences and didn't care because it would mean future ratings points for the sagging Monday Night enterprise.

Either way, the Disney Co., owner of ABC and ESPN, basically kicked its business partner, the NFL, in the teeth. While I'm a believer in separating news organizations from the outfits they cover, a pointless exploitation of the worst aspects of athletes isn't the way to make the separation.

I haven't heard whether anyone was fired or suspended. But the fact that no one blinked over making Owens look irresponsible tells me it isn't just athletes who don't care about accountability.

Sports didn't invent the Enron-style disregard of one's own colleagues as well as customers. But team sports should be a principal bulwark against the acceptance of me-first destructiveness.

If I were Holmgren, I'd say, "Koren, go ahead and jump up while you're suspended. But if you come down, you're fired."