Double-standard train arrives at Reid's station

Oh, and the double-standard train rolls on. Just imagine if Tyrone Willingham was the coach of Notre Dame and the Irish lost to freaking Navy for the first time in four decades? Then acted like a petulant, obnoxious child to the media as Charlie Weis has done ever since he came to the Irish?

Willingham would have never been able to act as boorishly as Weis has while losing as miserably.

If it had been Willingham falling to Navy, he or his property might have been physically harmed. I'm not kidding.

Reid's situation is the greatest example maybe in many, many decades of how perception works in our society and how people are treated differently.

Reid is a good person, but again would there be the level of understanding given to a player, if one of his sons was high on heroin and operating a motor vehicle and the other son in a separate incident pointed a handgun at a motorist?

There would be numerous questions about that player's worthiness as a parent and demands for him to leave football. Not just by the local media but by many in the media across the country.

As a society, we normally have little sympathy for the parents of drug dealers. We often blame them for the behavior of their kids. Parent and child are usually linked together. Reid is escaping that kind of judgment.

Not only is he escaping judgment, he is receiving the kind of pass from many fans and the media -- and equally important the NFL -- that no player would ever get.

The NFL is trying to deny there is a double standard at work but it's just not believable. I know this league. If a member of a player's family was running a "drug emporium," the antennae of this new, hard-ass commissioner would be raised.

Yes, the double-standard train rolls on.

Not exactly shocking that it is, however.