I've broken #3 a bit with Michigan sports, but have dialed it back a bunch in recent years.

I hope people hold their tongues, or try to avoid the quick, shitty remark the next time an OSU, MSU, ND player gets caught up in a similar criminal situation. At a bare minimum, try to fold the context of that kid's background into your assessment. I'm not knocking this post, because he gets it right saying there has to be a societal punishment for this type of act. But I suspect many of us might not be so pure of heart if we looked back on things.

Frank is one hell of a football player.  I hope he decides to move forward in a positive way and that someday he becomes one hell of a man.

Very well said.

Thank you.

my heart was broken too. What a sad sad day for all of those involved.

On behalf of those of us who are imperfect and hold onto the stones we could cast, thanks Brian.  This is refreshing in light of the age of "holier than thou" sports media.  No one would come out looking good if our worst moments were exposed.

This was a brave peice to have written.

The tension here is that we all liked Frank.  We liked his play and we liked his story.  And now this.  The world says you can't like him anymore.  However, let's face it, there is that little part of ourselves that remebers the Frank Clark we knew before last weekend.  We want that guy back, but can't have him.  Neither can he. 

Great post, Brian. Lots of good thoughts in the thread as well. The whole situation is just sad.

The basic point Brian's getting at here was perhaps most memorably expressed by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” 

I am rereading The Brothers Karamazov with my girlfriend. We are less than 100 pages in and just last night we reached the chapter "So be it! So be it!" wherein Ivan is having a discussion with Father Zosima about ecclisiastical courts, punishment, and the relationship between church and state.

Ivan takes the position that the church should seek to become the State, that Jesus should have accepted Satan's final offer to rule over all the kingdoms of the world, that criminals should be excommunicated so that they will have to grapple with the consequences of their actions rather than being able to say "I have done nothing wrong and I am being unjustly punished by the State", that only through the unification of political and spiritual authority can the world be cleansed of its evils.

Zosima's response is staggering. In the previous chapter, he had already given communion to a woman who [probably--it's not explicitly stated] poisoned her violent, abusive husband while he was ill and is now dealing with horrible guilt over it. Zosima [who was a drunken and violent soldier in his youth, before joining the monastery, and killed another man in a petty duel] tells her to pray for forgiveness, pray for her departed husband, that she need not punish herself any further, and that she should use this experience to transform herself into a stronger and more loving person. His response to Ivan is that the state already punishes very harshly "like a father" and that the church is like a mother, providing love and spiritual guidance indiscriminantly to even the worst criminals. He then claims that perhaps the socialist utopia that Ivan desires might only be possible if the State were to become more churchlike--then criminals could be spiritually reformed into valuable members of society instead of exiled to Siberia [as Dostoevsky was before he wrote TBK].

I personally am not here to get into a metaphysical discussion as this blog is not the proper place for that, but in matters of passing moral judgment I think we can all be a little more churchlike. Frank Clark [and C'sonte York, for that matter] have made some horrible and violent split second decisions, but I think it's safe to say that no one or nearly no one here has experienced that level of violence and neglect in our upbringings. Does the fact that the abused sometimes turn into abusers absolve these young men of moral responsibility? No. But we should bear this horrible cycle of violence in our minds before passing condemnation. The State has spoken and these two young men are kicked out of the program and facing criminal prosecution, as is just and proper. Let us all now strive to be a little more churchlike in our attempts to make sense of it.

He looks like a guy who can't believe what he just did and is devastated.  Certainly a well written honest piece.   The whole thing just sucks.   Here's hoping Frank gets it figured out.

when Zidane lost his mind and head-butted Metterazzi in the chest. Of course, Italy went on to win the World Cup, and I have never been to a bigger/better party in all of my years.

Some locals drove their Fiat Panda's (with 5 or 6 people on top) into the Mediterranean Sea that evening. On purpose.

I know, cool story bro.

On Mimetic theory:

"By placing the blame for all the hatred and distress on one individual or group of individuals, the community’s violence becomes polarized toward the ones being blamed.  These responsible individuals become the scapegoats for all the bad feeling in the community. By expelling or killing the scapegoat, order is restored and the community becomes peaceful again. The single act of sanctioned violence, becomes like a vaccination against the disease of chaotic, out of control violence.

It is critical that the members of the community be completely convinced that the scapegoat is guilty for this mechanism to restore order.  That is why the scapegoat must be accused and slandered before he is killed, but after the killing, everyone attributes the restored order to the scapegoat’s sacrifice.  In this way, the sacrificial victim becomes responsible for both the violence and the peace in the community.  He becomes “the sacred”."

Well said.  Clark might turn out to be a horrible, broken person, but I have my doubts about that.  But the condescending tone of "good riddance" to a guy people cheered for a couple of weeks ago, who had a tough life (much tougher than most people here have experienced) and has clearly made a bad decision, is what makes the internet so insufferable.  Nobody is condoning what happens, but for all the "Michigan Men", "Leaders and Best", and puffing of chests a part of this fanbase does to make themselves feel superior, they are incredibly quick to cut bait on a human being and wash themselves of any perceived association.  Clark needs help right now to get better as a person, but that type of real concern and help apparently isn't realistic for people who think sitting on some steps for 4 hours constitutes passion and dedication.

I will disagree that thoughts going out to the victim are hypocritical; we don't know the victim, but I would like to think that most people here would try to make her feel better, in whatever way possible, after such a traumatic situation.

That was brilliant Brian, coming from a place of true honesty.  On this topic I could not agree more.

One thing that has been bothering me over the years is how most Americans are so increasingly sactimonious and judgemental and intolerant.

I find it incredibly hypocritical, especially with all the lip service to freedom and individuality and tolerance and due process.  Frank Clark did a bad thing.  Something society should not allow to go unpunished.  Something that makes anyone connected with Michigan feel a bit ashamed.

But unless you do/did something constructive to help the victim, they are doing little more than projecting and piling on by belaboring the obvious. Pointing out the obvious sins of others only seems like a smokescreen, a way of directing the guilt and evil within at others in cheaply justified way .