The NFL now investigates potential draft picks and makes information available to teams on draft day regarding a player's profile. These investigations include checks into criminal records, academic performance, class attendance and family history. Also, teams contact coaches, roommates, fraternity brothers, even former girlfriends of players to piece together a picture of who the young men are and will become. It is very thorough and necessary. Adding another player whose resume includes a working understanding of the American legal system wasn't something they could risk.
Teams are no longer willing to chance mistakes and gamble on questionable characters.
When organizations occasionally falter, as the New England Patriots did in drafting Christian Peter in '97 without knowing his history of violence and substance abuse, they very swiftly address the problem. Peter was traded to the Giants for a box of socks and an all-expense paid trip to Newark. Writers around the country are asking if the judging of character as a tool of establishing a player's worth is fair. It is not only fair, but long overdue and the wave of the future. With organizations asking for taxpayers to support the construction of new stadiums, athletes making unimaginable sums, children in search of role models, it is necessary for those in control to stand in judgment.