No justice in Hunt’s eight-game suspension
What’s worse? On two occasions testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug? Or on two occasions physically assaulting people, including shoving and kicking a woman?
In the NFL, the former will get a player suspended for 10 games without pay.
The latter will sideline you for less than a season, as we learned on Friday when the NFL finally punished Kareem Hunt.
Hunt was suspended for eight games without pay this coming season, on top of the final five regular-season and two post-season games Hunt missed last season with the Kansas City Chiefs.
Hunt is now a member of the Cleveland Browns. They signed him four weeks ago, after the Chiefs waived him last Nov. 30, on the day video went viral that showed him violently shoving and kicking a woman at a Cleveland hotel.
But only eight games? Browns fans less concerned with the off-field conduct of players and more interested in what they can achieve on the football field are no doubt fist pumping.
With the suspension, Hunt will lose $303,529 of his base 2019 salary of $645,000, ESPN reported.
The native of Willoughby, Ohio had been one of the NFL’s best young running backs, as a rusher and receiver, until that TMZ video went viral. In 11 games last fall he rushed for 824 yards and seven TDs and caught 26 passes for 378 yards and seven more TDs.
Hunt can join his new teammates in club workouts beginning April 1, two weeks from Monday. For the next five-and-a-half months, Hunt will resume his NFL career, timing-wise, as if nothing had happened.
Justice? It doesn’t feel like it.