Where is the benefit of the doubt?

The sports media and I are having another one of those days where we just aren't getting along very well. Two separate stories have caught my attention, and aside from the fact that they are both football stories, the actual facts of the stories couldn't be more different. Yet, some of the coverage I've seen around both stories leads me to the same question: What do people have to do to earn the benefit of the doubt these days?

The first story stems from Sunday's AFC championship game between the Patriots and the Chargers. As football fans know, San Diego went into that game with their 3 best offensive players banged up. Star running back LaDainan Tomlinson was suffering from a knee injury, as was QB Philip Rivers, and standout tight end Antonio Gates had a beat up toe. The latter two played, with varying limitations based on their injuries. Tomlinson, however, was only in for 3 plays before sitting down for the rest of the game in favor of backup Michael Turner. The Chargers were able to move the ball, but 4 deep drives stalled outside the end zone, and the Chargers managed only 4 field goals in falling by a 21-12 score.

In the two days since the game, Tomlinson has been absolutely killed by a number of national media figures, perhaps most prominently former player Deion Sanders, for a perceived lack of toughness in his unwillingness to gut out his injury and play in the biggest game of his career. That perception hasn't been helped by revelations that Rivers was actually playing on a partially torn ACL which will require surgery and a 6 month rehab, and in fact even had arthroscopic surgery last week just so he could play on Sunday. He also wasn't helped by the fact that, after he returned to practice on Thursday, the Chargers took him off the injury report completely, implying that they felt he was at 100%.

The second story broke yesterday, when Indianapolis coach Tony Dungy ended several days worth of speculation by announcing that he will return to coach the Colts in 2008. Dungy's family had recently moved from Indianapolis back to Tampa, where Dungy had been stationed for 6 years in his first stint as an NFL head coach. As a result, the prevailing notion was that Dungy, a noted family man who has spent years with his All-Pro Dad organization preaching faith and family over football, would retire from coaching and rejoin them.

While nationally there hasn't been a whole ton of commentary on this, I was alerted today to this article by Indianapolis Star writer Bob Kravitz. In it, Kravitz, while stating that he is "uncomfortable" doing so, suggests that by deciding to continue on with the Colts while his family is in Tampa, Dungy has revealed himself to be something of a hypocrite.

Maybe if you just look at these stories on the surface, you don't really see a whole lot for even a noted media critic like myself to seize on. And yet, let's go a step further with both. First, Tomlinson. LT is in his 7th year in the NFL, and prior to this year's playoffs, he had never missed a game due to an injury. His lone career DNP was a coaches decision in 2004 in the last game of the season, which was meaningless to the Chargers playoff postion. And he's done this while logging over 300 carries and more than 50 catches each year. He had 375 combined touches this year, for a career low. You don't do that as a running back in the NFL without playing through an injury or two. It just doesn't happen. LT has never done anything to demonstrate a particularly low threshold for pain. If there's a player in the NFL who has earned the right to be implicitly trusted when he says "I can't go", it's LT. And yet, here we are. What does LT have to do to get the benefit of the doubt? Do I know for sure that LT absolutely couldn't go on Sunday? Obviously not. Really, only Tomlinson knows that for sure. But prior to Sunday, there was zero evidence to suggest he was the kind of player to "wimp out", and what happened on Sunday was hardly conclusive in that regard. So I'm going to give him a pass, and I think the media should be quicker to do so as well. If you want to harp on him, harp on him for his bench-sitting, helmeted, brooding act after he came out of the game. Of course, the sheer irony of Deion Sanders, who I'm fairly certain never actually hit anyone in his NFL career, questioning LT's toughness almost makes the story bearable.

And then there's Dungy's situation. First of all, I think it's rather arrogant of someone like Kravitz to assume the he knows what would be best for the Dungy family, especially so given that we don't have all the various details of the concessions the Colts made to Dungy in order to keep him on the sidelines for another year. And yet I respect the fact that, since Dungy has made his "family first" mantra a public thing throughout the years, he does open himself up for public scrutiny on such issues. Really, I get that. This isn't a "how dare you tell someone else how to raise their family" rant. And yet, Dungy isn't new to life as an NFL coach. 2008 will mark his 13 straight year in an NFL head coaching position. He has been involved with All-Pro Dad for about as long, as I understand it. And in all that time, I'm not aware of any significant suggestion that he was anything but the family first guy he presented himself as. And now you're going to assume that 12+ years down the road he's suddenly done an about face in that area? Again, what does the guy have to do to get the benefit of the doubt? I can't crawl inside Dungy's head, so I don't know what exactly he's thinking. And maybe he has really placed football first in this instance. Obviously, only he and his family know what went into the decision. But still, the man has a track record that merits being taken at his word when he says he believes this is the best choice for him and his family. At the first least, could we keep that word "hypocrite" in the sheath for a little while longer? I have to wonder if this story doesn't come more from Kravitz trying to explain away the fact that he, like the vast majority of the Indy media, guessed wrong on what Dungy's move would be.

So seriously, what does a person have to do to get the benefit of the doubt? Does the benefit of the doubt even exist anymore in a context where it would fly in the face of a more interesting story? I think it does, because I'm pretty sure I saw Randy Moss getting it last week in the face of battery allegations. Maybe that's it - if you win all your games and break records, you get a pass.

Regardless of the answer to the larger question, I think the level of cynicism illustrated here is unfortunate.