This right here is what the dumbest extreme of the dimmest science attached to the moron NFL image machinery looks like.


Josh Gordon, on his time in in-patient rehab for microscopic traces of weed, with a horse:

Gordon checked himself into Cliffside Malibu, a five-star luxury rehab facility in California. He tried music therapy, water therapy, acupuncture. He was assigned a horse he was responsible for feeding. He was encouraged to get in tune with it and to "be nice to it." "It's definitely some hippie s—-," Gordon says.

First, why not a puppy? Second, petting a horse and talking to it is some shit you're asking people to do to get them to stop taking drugs? Third, fuck that horse; that's a narc horse. The hell kind of friends are you going to make with your assigned rehab horse, who draws room and board from the rehab facility? And actually, luxury in-patient weed rehab facility, why are you tying stoners to horses to make sure they're fed? That can't be legal; hire a damned groundskeeper.


Anyway, forget the rest of that profile. Because you can leave out Cris Carter, for reasons unclear, weighing in on Josh Gordon and taking drugs, and forget the manifestly stupid testing policies at work here, and the prerequisite apology kabuki before rejoining "football activities." Stupid shit like this, layering a redemption narrative (which reads close enough to a eulogy to nail down the consequences) on top of an infraction of, essentially, bureaucratic negligence, is exactly as stupid as the shit-for-brains scandal-hunting NCAA assholes shining a black light on athletes' sheets and an optometrist's scope into their pupils, only without the courtesy of pretending that it matters even a little.