Yeah, by this line of thinking we gotta get rid of Ray Lewis for that murder rap he dodged. At least Ricky is just a pothead...

Given the events of the past couple of years involving other players, Williams' transgressions seem relatively mild.

No dog killing, armed robbery, attempted rape, sexual assault, battery, misuse of firearms here....

Ricky seems like a nice guy.....

He's just a pot head.

He may not be the poster boy for the most admirable lifestyle, but he's light years ahead of some of the thugs the NFL tolerates.

Come on now? I really think the reasoning behind the vilification of Ricky Williams is totally unjustified, especially when you consider many of the thugs that populate the NFL today. Something's wrong when Ricky Williams gets thrown out of the NFL for one year because a diet supplement he took had a substance that was banned, yet Albert Haynesworth, who crushed the head of a Dallas player, potentially destroying his career, only gets a 5 game suspension from the league, or when Ricky Manning goes out and makes anti-Semitic comments to the public and just gets a slap on the wrist. And we won't even start on the Cincinnati Bengals. Barely a week goes by without news that an NFL player has engaged in criminal acts, yet here's the league spending thousands of dollars prosecuting a passive Buddhist runningback because he occasionally took ganja in the privacy of his own home. And he was suspended for this year because one of his dietary supplements (the specific one which was not banned by the NFL!) contained a substance which was banned!

Even more ridiculous, another Dolphins runningback, Sammy Morris, was suspended for 4 games this year because the team doctors prescribed Sudafed for a sinus infection he had during last season. However, one of Sudafed's ingredients contain a banned substance, therefore, under the "zero-tolerance" drug policy, he was suspended! The NFL contains over a thousand players; you can't tell me that they are so stringent with all of them? Something's not right here. The conspiracy theorist in me says that perhaps the league is trying to destroy the Dolphins running game, but I really think there's something else afoot here.

Now I won't go into whether or not drug use is okay, that's something different, all what I'm saying is that the league needs to be more aggressive in discouraging their players from engaging in criminal acts, besides drug use. The NFL probably has taken a "zero tolerance" policy on drug use because of recent scandals in professional sports revolving around that. They want to look like they're being tough on drugs; therefore they look to players like Ricky Williams and Sammy Morris who have a established history of drug use and prosecute them down to the letter of the law. In the league's book, even the most reasonable of defenses won't fly, because it's really political. Now I'm not saying that drug use should be permitted, all what I'm saying is that the league needs to fair. What Albert Haynesworth did should merit expulsion from the league, and possibly criminal prosecution. Yet why don't they make such a big deal about that?

I have no respect for Ricky Williams or Marcus Vick or any other player who has been in trouble or tests positive.

The NFL is unchanged. The NFL is so strong that not one player affects how well it does.