Minnesota Vikings Do The Right Thing - After Being Pressured

Troy Williamson, Minnesota Vikings Wide Receiver, missed practice time and the game this past week, and for good reason. Williamson's grandmother, who raised him, passed away.

Putting his focus on family, Troy took time away from the team in order to make the funeral arrangements, and get family members (including those in the military) back home for the funeral. He paid for all the funeral arrangements, as well as paying to get family members back home to be at the funeral.

The Vikings organization chose to fine him a game check, worth about 25K. The word "fine" just struck me wrong, but oddly enough, most of the media was agreeing with the decision. I didn't understand that at first, but then I thought about it more. The media guys are all in a rat race, trying to climb to the top, and in many cases, I am willing to bet that quite a few of these guys/gals put their career ahead of their families in a quest to someday climb to the top of the media mountain. I won't accuse them all of doing it, but I would be surprised if this wasn't the case for some of them.

One of the things that stuck in my head was the fact that it wasn't costing the Vikings any more or less, regardless if they paid Williamson or not. They could either pay him the 25K, or they could donate it to charity. Either way, the team has to spend the money. It wasn't like they were going to save anything.

After a few days of discussion, which included media members justifying the decision by the Vikings, while the majority of the fans seemed rather outraged at the decision, Childress and the Vikings decided that they would not fine Williamson for "doing the right thing" and being with his family.

A few words come to mind. Perspective, morals, and family values. During the discussions I heard this week, I think these things were lost. Several times I heard people saying that when you have a job like Williamson's, you need to be there, relating it to the CEO of a big company when big decisions are being made.

I couldn't understand that way of thinking. Troy Williamson plays a game for a living. After hearing this, I couldn't help but think the problem actually lied at the feet of the sports media. These guys are getting paid very good money to do a very unimportant job. They sit on the radio and do the same thing the typical fan does. They talk about the games. To them though, this is a "business". Maybe these guys just can't deal with the fact that the topic of discussion that they are covering just really isn't that important when you look at the overall "big picture" of life.

Not that it will ever happen, but if I ever luck into a shot at talking about sports, and pushing my opinions though a microphone for thousands of people to listen to, I hope I don't lose perspective and take the route I seen too many media members take this week in regards to this story.