One Hunt Runs the Show, Another is Asked to Leave It

     We still live in a world where a man calls Sportsradio 810 WHB yesterday and states “The woman came at Kareem Hunt fists flying, and if you want to fight like a man, you have to take it like a man”. And later, mournfully, “Geez, everything was going so great for the Chiefs, and now this happens”.

     The statement was in the first case inaccurate, and the second portion is more than painfully archaic and unfortunate, and thoughts like that are why decisions like yesterdays by the Kansas City Chiefs are positive and necessary, even if the Chiefs kind of backed in to their choice.

     Hunt this season had played with a fury and excellence that even exceeded last years performance when he led the NFL in rushing. As I watched him leap defenders and finish runs with a punishing style that made it look like he was being paid by the inch, a thought continued to pop into my head that I said more than once when analyzing Chiefs football. That Hunt was hellbent to be so good that everyone would forget the two messes that he got into during the off-season.

     The one that proved to be his undoing came shortly after the season ended in February at his luxury hotel residence as he and a group of his friends had an altercation with young women whom they had been partying with until the 3:30 a.m. incident. The second was when he was alleged to have punched a man in the face in a bar skirmish. Neither resulted in charges against Hunt, but certainly it was more than just a bad look.

     As the Chiefs season turned into a different kind of party, and Hunt was a big part of the rock star offense that has taken the league by storm, this all seemed a distant memory. Until yesterday, when TMZ Sports released hotel surveillance video that showed Hunt shoving and eventually kicking a young woman who became belligerent when asked to leave.

          Most of the parties were wildly inebriated. The police would eventually decide that there was too much of a “he said, she said” involved to press charges. Both Hunt and the woman in separate reports were singled out as suspects. But I will say this, Hunt’s friends assertion that the young women became agitated when they were asked to leave because the young men found out the girls were nineteen years old strains credulity to the utmost, and seems far less likely than the victim’s assertion that they were sent packing when one of the women didn’t want to sleep with one of the group.

     The video certainly doesn’t rise to the Ray Rice level, and certainly if video were available of Tyreek Hill’s actions in college it would easily trump Hunt’s actions, but it is certainly bad enough. Hunt repeatedly has to be restrained, and the kick at the end, while hardly vicious, certainly could have been if he wasn’t being held back.

     The video was released early in the afternoon, five hours later the NFL placed Hunt on the Commissioner’s Exempt List, and a half hour later, the Chiefs cut Hunt. But in their terse statement, they cited the fact that Hunt lied about the incident when confronted by team officials as the reason for cutting him, not the action itself. It provided a rather convenient out for the Chiefs, who get to seem like they were taking the high road. I have serious doubts this action would have been taken for the incident on its own, even with the video.

     I admit to being very disappointed by how quickly the subject turned to the pure football effects of cutting Hunt. Thinking immediately about the impact on your favorite team or worse yet your fantasy league team, is how teams like the Redskins justify signing Rueben Foster.. If there was a tepid reaction to the Hunt video, I just about guarantee would not have ever heard about Kareem’s truthfulness.

     But in the end, the right thing was done. And if we are to believe the Chiefs, once again the cover-up has proved to be worse than the crime. From the time I was entering adulthood and was immersed in Watergate, time and again I have seen that people never learn. The truth almost always comes out, and wins out. Hunt almost won his gamble due to passive police work, and public attitudes, but that old mean TMZ got him.

     Sam Mellinger of the Kansas City Star had a tweet to the effect that he thinks maybe TMZ should do investigative work for the NFL, and he is only half-kidding. He is absolutely right. The NFL still doesn’t seem to have much diligence in trying to get to the truth in situations of violence against women. If TMZ can get the video, the NFL sure as hell could have.

     I’d like to think that other young men would start to learn lessons about their behavior around women, but that is more based on hope than cogent thought. Attitudes in this regard as still moving creakily. I’ll take baby steps, but I’d prefer great strides.