Document the Atrocities

This has been an exceedingly strange and difficult offseason for the LSU football team. There have certainly been some bright spots since the Sugar Bowl, most notably the 4 Tigers drafted in the first round of the NFL draft and the signing of a class that many believe may be the best ever at LSU. But other than that, we have dealt with a series of unfortunate or otherwise difficult circumstances.

• The hiring of former LSU coach Nick Saban by one of our biggest rivals, and the subsequent media storm. Technically, the hiring was announced on the day of the Sugar Bowl, so it wasn't strictly an offseason story, but much of the aftermath occurred in the offseason.
  
• While we signed a great recruiting class, the story was soured by the Joe McKnight and Luther Davis situations. To recap, Luther Davis committed to LSU, and then secretly took a visit to the University of Alabama and constructed an elaborate web of lies in an attempt to cover it up. Depending on who you believe, we either pulled his scholarship offer or he decided to de-commit and go to Bama. Joe McKnight, arguably the top prospect in the entire country and a Louisiana kid, decided to go to USC rather than LSU, and there was a big stink.
• Ryan Perrilloux's counterfeiting saga, wherein he was investigated by the Feds for suspected involvement in a counterfeiting ring. He has not been charged and it is believed he may have been cleared of wrongdoing.
• Kyle Anderson allegedly attacked a man outside of a bar, putting him in the hospital. Anderson, a backup OL, was kicked off the team permanently.
• Zhamal Thomas and Troy Giddens, backup OL and DB respectively, allegedly broke into an apartment, stole some stuff, and tried to use a stolen credit card. They were kicked off the team permanently.
• Ryan Perilloux allegedly tried to enter a casino underage using someone else's ID. Because of this and other transgressions, he was suspended from the team indefinitely, and his fate is not decided.
• LSU's live tiger mascot, Mike V, dies unexpectedly following surgery.
• Former LSU defensive end and a key member of the 2003 national championship team Marquise Hill died in a recreational accident on Lake Pontchartrain. Reports are that he died saving another person from drowning.

You could say that we're waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it already has. Several times. And we're not done yet. Next week, the Major League Baseball draft takes place, and we will find out more about whether we will likely lose star recruit Chad Jones, one of the jewels of this great recruiting class. He has said he will go play baseball if the money is right.

Let's hope all this is just prologue to a great season.

Dr. Katz Wednesday

Alright, so I like animation. Always have. I also like really offbeat and dry humor. Therefore, I was a big fan of Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist, a show that came on Comedy Central about 10-12 years ago. It was a show about a guy who was living with his grown son, who was not quite ready to take on life yet. He was a therapist to famous stand-up comics. Here are some clips:

Dr. Katz with Jon Stewart



Dr. Katz's Receptionist



Dr. Katz's son Ben is voiced by H. Jon Benjamin, who went on to voice Coach McGuirk in Home Movies, another wildly inventive and funny show. Dr. Katz's receptionist is voiced by Sarah Silverman's sister Laura Silverman.

The strange animation technique is called "Squigglevision", and it was invented by the guy who developed Dr. Katz into a show. It was later used in the Saturday morning show Science Court and Home Movies.

Accountability and Precedent

This doesn't seem like a particularly appropriate topic to bring up on Memorial Day, but darnit, it's what's on my mind right now. As most of you know, Ryan Perrilloux has been suspended from the football team over a misdemeanor charge of using another person's ID to get entry to a casino and is currently awaiting word on his LSU fate. Right now, the handwriting appears to be on the wall that Perrilloux will be allowed to remain on the team subject to some kind of suspension or other punishment.

This has some commenters upset. They think Miles either should banish Perrilloux permanently, or has to do so for some reason. The arguments seem to come in three flavors:

1. Ryan Perrilloux is a cancer who will forever be more trouble than he is worth.
2. Ryan Perrilloux must be expelled in order to express "accountability."
3. Ryan Perrilloux must be expelled because Les Miles has set the precedent with Zhamal Thomas, Troy Giddens, and Kyle Anderson. Failure to follow this precedent will show that more important athletes get favorable treatment, which will hurt Miles' credibility.

I don't really have anything to say about Argument #1, except to say that I don't know what Perrilloux is like personally, and I doubt the people who are making this argument know either. It's the 2nd and 3rd arguments that I have a real problem with and need to dispel.

It is not necessary to expel Ryan Perrilloux in order to achieve "accountability". This term is greatly misused in society, and not just in regards to athletics. As an attorney, I represent a good number of criminal defendants, and it's an argument that I see everywhere, always abused and always misused.

"Accountability" for wrongdoings means a) acknowledging the wrongdoing, b) making right on damage done, and c) facing appropriate additional consequences. It does not mean "facing the most oppressive punishment our consciences can stomach". People routinely get these confused. People say, "We must give him 20 years in prison, or there will be no accountability," as if 15 years in prison would be utterly lacking in accountability for whatever crime has been committed.

The key word in my three-pronged definition of accountability is "appropriate". When this is bastardized in to "barely conscionable", you get the kind of absurd results that make people say, "Ryan Perrilloux must be kicked off the team permanently for trying to illegally access a casino, otherwise he is just walking all over us." Would, say, a 2 game suspension not punish Perrilloux in any way? Will his criminal punishments not affect him in any way? Mere slaps on the wrist! No, Mr. Perrilloux's life must be permanently impacted in ways that may affect his future livelihood. Otherwise, how will he learn? How will our children learn?

Absurd, I say.

Now for Argument #3, which says that Miles set a precedent in expelling Thomas, Giddens, and Anderson from the team, and now must follow it by doing the same with Perrilloux. Honestly, this argument is so devoid of good reasoning that it is a wonder anyone has to bother to refute it. As an initial matter, it assumes that all athletes should be treated similarly under similar circumstances, an assumption I question.

But more importantly, precedent only holds under similar circumstances, and Ryan Perrilloux's situation is not remotely similar to the Giddens/Thomas/Anderson situations. It's not even close.

In the cases of Thomas and Giddens, they committed a serious property crime whereby they broke into a house, committed theft, and used someone else's credit crime. These are felony crimes with concrete, identifiable victims. Anderson allegedly laid in wait for someone before attacking him and putting him in the hospital. A violent crime with a concrete, identifiable victim.

Ryan Perrilloux, by contrast, allegedly used his brother's ID to enter a casino illegally. While I don't question the legitimacy of this as a crime, it is a crime a lot like drug use or underage drinking in that the victim and the perpetrator are the same person. It is a law designed to protect the Ryan Perrilloux's from themselves. It has no concrete, identifiable victim. Everyone is a victim and no one is a victim.

This is so plainly obvious that I wonder why anyone even brings up the prior "precedent" as such. Perhaps it's just a symptom of the growing sentiment among some people that all crimes are roughly equal and all criminals deserve to be treated the same, as if there are no grades to wrongdoing whatsoever. Sorry, but a marijuana user is not as bad as a home invasion rapist, and Ryan Perrilloux's actions are not as bad as the actions of the other three. They need not, and should not, be treated as if they are similar.

Now, if the team gets together and decides that Perrilloux's misdeeds along with his past misdeeds mean that he should no longer be a part of the team, I am OK with that. It is not strictly necessary under any analysis of "accountability" and "precedent", however.

Marquis Hill

It appears that a former Tiger and a key member of the 2003 National Championship team may be gone. Marquis Hill has been missing in Lake Pontchartrain for some time now.

I didn't know the man at all. I only know about him that he was a very good defensive end for the Tigers, and that he was trying to jump start an NFL career in New England.

It appears from reports he may have died saving someone else's life. I don't know what else to say about this.

Update: His body has been found.

Exploitation

Exploit: to use selfishly for one's own ends

This is a post about the ethics of keeping a captive tiger. I have thought a lot about this topic over the last several years. I've gone back and forth on what I believe about the ethics of having a live tiger mascot. I may change my mind again in the future.

My current opinion on this subject is this: we are ethically in the clear for keeping a live tiger mascot, because we do not harm the tiger and the tiger seems to get significant benefits from the deal.

Be clear. I do not believe that it is always OK to keep live animal mascots. I think it depends on the animal and it depends on how you treat the animal. In our case, we keep a tiger. If we kept a buffalo, wolf, vulture, or Cornhusker as a mascot, the ethical considerations would be different.

I believe we're doing something OK for several reasons.

• Tigers are generally solitary creatures in the wild, so it's not such a bad thing to keep a single tiger.
• We do no deliberate harm to the tiger, other than put it through the stress of performing before a large audience 7 or 8 times per year.
• The tiger benefits by getting world class veterinary care, to the point that I understand captive tigers live much longer than is typical in the wild.
• Tigers in the wild are endangered, subject to significant poaching, and victims of loss of habitat.
• Like a wild tiger, our tigers get the occasional opportunity to interact with other tigers, as LSU regularly breeds our tigers.
  

I realize there are down sides. For one thing, our tigers don't have the opportunity to roam the way a wild tiger will. There is also that whole man-in-tiger-suit-runs-up-and-taunts-him-several-times-per-year. While I suppose that isn't necessarily a really big deal, I don't think there's any argument in the world we're doing it for the benefit of the tiger. Hence, the title and opening segment of this thread. We exploit the tigers, though I agree that it is not in a particularly serious way, and the tiger is adequately compensated for it.

Ultimately, I think the bigger issue is the tiger's inability to roam like a wild tiger. However, I do not believe this is at all similar to caging a human being. I don't think tigers look for "personal fulfillment". I think tigers struggle to survive, and if they found an easy way to survive in the wild, would be quite "fulfilled" by it. Our system provides the tiger with that.

Keep in mind that some of these factors are very specific to a tiger. Personally, I think Colorado's buffalo is much more ethically troubling than a tiger. The buffalo is a herd animal, most comfortable in groups that is dozens large. To hold one is really inadequate. I'd think the same of a wolf or an elephant (which I don't think anyone has).

For what it's worth, I think this is a completely different issue from using animals in medical or product testing, which can be less troubling or more troubling, depending on the testing.

I understand PETA's position here. I just think they're wrong.

Another Whimsical Thursday

I had to put off Whimsical Wednesday yesterday because of certain other pressing news. If bad stuff is going to go down, why does it have to go down on a Tuesday?

Anyway, one serious note to open. If you disagree with PETA's stance on LSU having a live tiger mascot, just say you disagree and say why. Saying something to the effect of "I'd like to get two tigers and feed the President of PETA to them" just makes you look like a jerk. Healthy debate is a good thing.

This week saw the end of one of my favorite television shows. Veronica Mars involuntarily ended its three year run, which started on UPN and ended on the CW, after the end of UPN. In case you don't know, Veronica Mars is a show about a teenage private detective. It's a lot smarter than it sounds. At its best, it was film noir set it high school. It took on issues of race, class, and privilege as intelligently as anything I'd ever seen on television. It also had mostly terrific acting, especially for a show that was put together with such a small budget.

It started with the death of violent death of Veronica's best friend Lily (seen only in flashbacks and dream sequences), which Veronica took upon herself to solve, though it brought her up against the very wealthy, the powerful, thee corrupt, and the violent. In a twist I've never seen in a network show, she also had to solve her own rape, which occurred before the first episode, when she was sophomore in high school.

Along the way, it set up stars Kristen Bell and Jason Dohring for future stardom. It resurrected the career of Harry Hamlin, and put Enrico Colantoni back to work. No character was perfect, but no one (except Harry Hamlin) was unambiguously evil. Good people sometimes did bad things for their own reasons, and bad people sometimes softened.

It lost a little steam after the first season. The second season's primary mystery was a less compelling, "Who put a bomb on the school bus?" story. The third season really ran out of gas, but the final episodes were great, harkening back to Lily's murder and bringing back seemingly forgotten issues of class and privilege. If the rest of the season had been that strong, there would probably be a 4th season.

Anyway, here's a YouTube video.

Slow News Day No More

After complaining yesterday about slow off-season news, the LSU football team went and did something about it. I guess they showed me. I should have remembered that in the off-season, no news is good news.

Backup QB Ryan Perilloux was cited for a misdemeanor yesterday and suspended from the team indefinitely. He apparently tried to enter a casino using another person's ID. He is underage. Les Miles responded by suspending him, with no word on what the terms of the suspension will ultimately be.

Taken in isolation, this incident is not particularly severe. It is, as they say, a victimless crime, unlike the burglaries and assaults that plagued the team earlier this Spring. The law that Mr. Perilloux allegedly broke is in place not to protect people from theft or violence, but to protect Mr. Perilloux and those like him from themselves.

I think, taken in isolation, a brief suspension is in order. As the backup QB, probably the worst suspension you can give him is to suspend him for games against rent-a-wins like Middle Tennessee State, where a backup QB is otherwise likely to get a lot of snaps. Suspending him for Virginia Tech wouldn't really hurt him because he'd only likely play in the event of an injury to Matt Flynn.

"Taken in isolation" is a key phrase here. There is some indication that Mr. Perilloux has not been a choir boy in his time at LSU, and in particular has acted childishly on numerous occasions, all handled in-house and kept out of the press, but all with adverse consequences to him.

I trust Les Miles to get this one right, but I hope he is keeping in mind my argument that it is not necessary or even desirable to treat all athletes and all incidents the same way. Ryan Perilloux is very important to this team. He is going to be the only scholarship backup QB on the team who has gone through a Spring Practice. He is the heir apparent to the starting job next season.

If Ryan Perilloux is not available next year, and Matt Flynn gets hurt, our QB will be either a true freshman or a walk-on. Our chances of winning the SEC will be very small, and our chances of winning the National Championship will be nil.

If Mr. Perilloux has been THAT bad of an actor that he really needs to go, I'm fine with that, and I won't ultimately question the decision. I will however be very worried about the state of affairs on the football team.

Here's hoping Matt Flynn stays healthy.