Wednesday, May 30, 2007

I'm Agent Johnson, this is Special Agent Johnson. No relation



I know I'm beating this horse to death over here, but the David Kircus saga keeps getting kookier and kookier.

Shanahan apparently brought in an FBI agent last week to administer a lie detector test to Kircus, and Shanahan says he passed with "flying colors, so he will be a part of our football team." Obviously.

I already pointed out that there was no way Shanny was going to hand Kircus his outright release over this. He got a lot of praise for his earlier comments about Kircus getting released if he didn't "handle himself in the right way" or if he was convicted of the charges. Clearly, that was all blather and bullshit. This polygraph nonsense is a nice little way for the coach to cover his ass. Shanny is now saying that regardless of the outcome of the matter, Kircus will be on the team (you know...if he's good enough to make the final roster, which is not a given by any stretch).

There's even a little poll over at the D-Post asking if people agree w/ Shanny's decision. 46.5% of people chose "yes - Kircus should stay on team if convicted" while a sane thinking 41.8% say "no - Kircus should be booted if he's guilty." I tell you what, if Kircus is convicted, he's going to have much bigger problems than getting kicked off the team. His biggest problem is going to be avoiding the daily anal gang-rapes in the shower.

Shanahan doesn't give two shits about a player's character. If he did, he never would have signed Dale Carter or Daryl Gardner, he never would have drafted Maurice Clarett or Marcus Thomas and he would have cut John Mobley years before the neck injury did him in.

It's hard to blame him for not caring, his job is to win football games. This isn't college. He doesn't get paid to mold young men, but using the results of a widely discredited test to justify your decision to hang on to (lets face it) a mediocre player that may have serious mental problems just plain reeks.

UPDATE: Turns out, Shannny violated federal law (The Employee Polygraph Protection Act of 1988) not only by administering the test, but conditioning Kircus' employment on the results of the test. Good one, coach.

Hat tip to ProFootballTalk via the FanHouse

3 comments:

@slushygutter said...

I wonder if Subway Dave used the old thumb tack in the show technique to pass the test?

Does Shanny really need to go to all this trouble for Kircus? Isn't there 100 WRs across the AFL, Europe, CFL, etc who are basically the same as him?

Hallux Valgus said...

Shanahan conducted his own poll:

Do I give a fuck what the fans think? Unsurprisingly, 100% came back "no"

Hallux Valgus said...

I'm not interested in reading any legalese, but I don't think he violated the law. The way I read the story, Kircus offered to take the test and have his employment hinge on the outcome, not Shanahan. That may or may not matter. I'm too lazy to find out over a player like Kircus.