All Gobbled Up?

by user Donathan5507

To paraphrase Robert Burns, "the best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry."

I'm not sure if Pacman Jones can quote To A Mouse, or if Jones--who claims to have scored as high as 1150 on his SAT--even knows who Robert Burns is. Still, I can't help but wonder if that particular line of poetry wouldn't help him in planning his escapades.

With his most recent run-in with the law still fresh on the presses, Las Vegas Police charged the Tennessee Titans cornerback with two counts of felony coercion related to the February 18 shooting at Club Minxx that left Tommy Urbanski (a bouncer) paralyzed from the waist down and two others injured.

Two months after that incident, Jones purchased a full-page ad in The Tennessean to apologize to the Titan faithful.

Here's an excerpt from that letter:

"The first step in meeting these goals is for me to stop making the poor choices that have put me in this position. ..."

Now, I highly doubt that Jones took pen to paper (or his fingers to a keyboard, considering that it it's 2007) and wrote that letter. I'm sure that it was assembled by an educated member of the Titans' P.R. staff, but nonetheless, that's not the first time the troubled Titan had said something along those lines.

In fact, just 17 days before the Vegas incident, Jones was on the record as saying:

"I really have to watch where I go...maybe I'll chill out at a jazz bar somewhere with some older folks."

Yet another empty promise by Pacman. Here's the thing about him: he'll never change. He is too rooted in the culture and the friends that surrounded him during his childhood in an Atlanta housing project.

For most, it's almost maddening that someone with so much talent would simply throw it all away for a group of thugs, but that's just how things work in the hood culture. You never forget where you came from and you don't turn your back on friends. Look at Allen Iverson and Jamal Lewis--it's just the nature of it.

It's a shame, because Pacman could have had a key to Nashville just like Vince Young. His tenacious and exciting play is really something to watch--but it's unlikely that Jones will ever electrify fans at LP Field, or at any NFL venue, again. It should come as no surprise that Jones has become persona-non-cornerback in the Titan locker room. The Titans have more or less moved on, signing free agents Nick Harper and Kelly Herndon in addition to drafting Michael Griffin to fill the void left by Pacman.

There was a time when I was a staunch defender of Jones. That time, as Burns said in The Banks O'Doon is "departed never to return."