VANCOUVER — It really shouldn’t be cause for a pat on the back when a Canadian Football League club says thanks but no thanks to a guy like Chad Johnson.

Maybe he could still get open and catch the football, despite being 36 years old and two seasons out of the game, despite being one of those Terrell Owens/Randy Moss-type lightning rods who can’t seem to survive outside his own self-made womb of ego gratification.

He definitely excited the Twitterverse with the mere possibility on Thursday, repeatedly tweeting on his @ochocinco account that he intended to sign for the 2014 season with the B.C. Lions.

Perhaps he’d be an upgrade on the import receivers the B.C. Lions have: Emmanuel Arceneaux and Courtney Taylor and Ernest Jackson and whoever is moving up the depth chart at wide receiver.

Maybe, with a decade of National Football League stardom on his resume — though stale-dated by several years — the longtime Cincinnati Bengal could still be a difference maker, even at his age.

But then football operations chief Wally Buono and head coach Mike Benevides would have to go home at night and look in the mirror. And so would Travis Lulay, the quarterback.

What price, they would have to ask, those receptions?

“This is an initiative from an individual player, probably in discussion with some of our other players,” Buono said Friday. “Will I have a discussion with my boss? Yes. Do I have a strong inclination to move forward with it? No.”

There are certain things a professional sports organization stands for, and certain things it learns the hard way.

And Chad Johnson represented a challenge to both. A test, if you will, of what the Lions have learned from previous experience with me-first players (read: Casey Printers) and players at the sunset of their athletic careers (Geroy Simon) ... but most importantly, a test of their honesty.

The Lions — in one of the bolder and in some ways more dangerous initiatives to be undertaken by a team in a professional sport that gets a lot of headlines for the wrong reasons — have, for a couple of seasons now, thrown their weight behind a program called “Be More Than A Bystander, Break The Silence On Violence Against Women.”

Through a series of powerful public service announcements and videos, players like Lulay and slotback Shawn Gore, safety J.R LaRose and recently retired centre Angus Reid have urged the public to speak up and speak out — and now, their conviction as a football club has been put to the test.

On Aug. 11, 2012, a little over a month after marrying Evelyn Lozada, Chad Johnson was arrested on a charge of domestic battery. According to the police report, he allegedly head-butted his wife following an argument.

The next day, he was released by the Miami Dolphins. That’s right. Even the Miami Dolphins, home to Richie Incognito and an apparent locker-room culture of brutality and harassment and abuse, cut ties with him. Two days later, his wife filed for divorce. He entered a no-contest plea of misdemeanour domestic battery, and avoided jail time but eventually was incarcerated anyway, for repeated violations of his probation, which ended only four months ago.