Someone I'm rooting for...

I'm going to try and post a little bit about players who I think, despite first impression, deserve a little sympathy. Not sure how frequent this will be and the first guy isn't too much of a stretch. I have no doubt the NFL and media would eat it up if he was to make a Pro Bowl but I think Sergio Kindle deserves some kind of love. For those not familiar, he was injured when he fell down the stairs while sleep walking. His skull was fractured severely enough (I suppose there aren't too many mild skull fractures) that he has yet to practice or play with the Ravens. Recently, Jim Harbaugh expressed some hope that Kindle would be able to play again.

Kindle is by no means a choir boy. He's had a DUI arrests since the accident and at the time there was no shortage of rumors that alcohol was somehow involved. That said, it pretty quickly emerged that Kindle suffers from narcolepsy and that this condition contributed to the accident. Kindle eventually signed a contract with the Ravens which included no signing bonus. Players drafted immediately around him received approximately 1.75 million dollars in a guaranteed signing bonus. Although I can certainly understand the business reasons for the Ravens decision to exclude a signing bonus it seemed fairly callous and patently unfair, albeit perfectly legal. Most NFL teams probably would have done the same but it seems to me to be in bad faith. If he ever plays for them, they got themselves quite a bargain and something tells me they won't renegotiate (or they could have wink, wink, nod, nod agreement. I don't know)

He was a dynamic player at Texas that I would love to see return to the field. I don't know anything about Kindle personally but the when I think about his story, and just simply the time he invested in his career, there's a sad spot that makes me want to see him succeed. Somehow his DUI arrest, something for which I normally have very little sympathy for, especially from professional athletes, only made me root for him harder. I'm just looking for a little redemption for a guy who had a pretty shitty fall so close to his dreams.

-Q