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The NFL is a great football league. It is by far the best in the world. And though jerks like Pacman Jones, Michael Vick, Terrell Owens, and Randy Moss are weighing it down, the NFL is certainly not full of thugs.

Sure, these great players turned bad are giving the league some bad publicity. However, the media is over-hyping this way too much. They don't focus on the good that some of these players are doing. The NFL is trying its hardest to make its name associated with good, charitable people, rather than with selfish jerks. If you've watched a football game in the last year or so, you know that the NFL has strong relations with the United Way. What you didn't know is that they've been partners since 1973. Dallas Cowboys TE Jason Witten, Kansas City Chiefs G Brian Waters, and San Francisco 49ers QB Alex Smith were all recently featured in United Way commercials. United Way's partnership shows that the NFL does care, and that many of these players have strong values.

Peyton Manning is one of the least-thug-like players in the league. Props to him! In Septimber 2007, Manning and his wife made a charitable donation of an undisclosed amount to St. Vincent's Hospital in Indianapolis. It must've been a pretty large donation, because they renamed the children's wing, "Peyton Manning Children's Hospital at St. Vincent"! Also, you must've seen the MasterCard commercials he made. The media certainly should have given the NFL more good publicity than they got from it. He also hosted Saturday Night live in March 2007. What a likable guy! While I'm on the subject of Peyton, I've got to mention that Eli and Archie are also great, non-thug-like people.

If you really think about it, the NFL is not full of thugs. Can you name 10 players that currently play or have played in the league in the last 3 years that you would define as "thug"? I can't. In fact, many NFL players are my role models. I look up to them, and I respect the fact that they didn't go in the same direction of Vick and Jones. It's just a pity that the top "thugs" of the league are the ones that get publicity. ESPN ought to cover the good things done by sports stars more than they cover the bad things. I don't think I heard a thing about that Peyton Manning hospital donation! I, however, did hear about Vick's arrest, Vick's indictment, the whole works. If the media wouldn't make it show the NFL's players proportionally and not just the ones who do things that will bring bad publicity, this question wouldn't even be here. I think I've made my point now, and will now leave you with a thought: Do you really think that the ratio of murders to large charitable donations is really as large as to what is presented on the local news?

Learn more about this author, Jay Hutchinson.
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