The source of this photo released the following statement via Twitter: “I fully recognize the seriousness of the situation involving my favorite team, and I regret that my actions appear to make light of that serious situation. I apologize to anyone who was offended by my photoshopping.”
Ryan Leaf, First Round Prison Pick
If there’s a rock and roll heaven, well you know they’ve got a hell of a band. And if there is an NFL prison, you know they’ve got one hell of a team.
Here is one attempt at compiling an all-time criminal NFL team. Note that this is not an “all-thug” team, because what constitutes thuggery is strictly a matter of opinion. By some definitions, one can be a successful thug while staying within the confines of the law. In order for a player to qualify for this list, he must have been arrested at least once. Conviction is helpful, but not strictly required. Of course it’s possible for a player to be wrongfully arrested, or for the arrest to be clearly out of character. If so, the player likely won’t make our list.
All players who have been arrested are considered for selection on our All-Incarceration team, and where there are multiple candidates we give weight to players of higher quality rather than higher criminality. All other things being equal we will choose a murderer over a junkie. But if the junkie is a Hall of Fame caliber player while the murderer was an undrafted rookie who lacked the talent to ever start a game, the nod would go to the junkie.
The real measurement we’re after here is the magnitude of wasted opportunity, and loss of career or reputation. Where there is not a clear winner by this measurement, we’ll give bonus points to repeat offenders, and for cases of special notoriety or comedic attributes.
First we’ll look at candidates for each position, evaluate the merits of their cases, and then make selections. Number of arrests, and major infractions, are shown in parentheses.
