Ain't no party like a bachelor party

By Jon

This just in from the "had to be there" department: 14 were arrested, including Eric Staal of the Hurricanes and Jordan Staal of the Penguins, for being crazed, presumably drunken, idiots at Eric's bachelor party.

Eric spent the night in jail, and the brothers, along with the other twelve that were arrested, were charged with disorderly conduct and obstructing the legal process. Jordan had an underage drinking charge, to boot.

I'm trying to get inside of their heads, and I just can't. I will never understand an athlete that takes their situation for granted to the extent that they get in trouble with the law. Professional athletes are held to a higher standard, and they all know that the media will cover them like hawks, especially two of the games brightest young players.

There's no way that they could have thought that they would get off based on their "celebrity status". They were in Minnesota, and the NHL is far too obscure to have their players recognized by your run-of-the-mill law enforcement official. Besides, even if they were in Raleigh, cops have to keep track of far too many NASCAR drivers to recognize a simple hockey player. In fact, the NHL benefits greatly from the aforementioned obscurity in this case. This is the hockey equivalent to Carson Palmer and Laurence Maroney getting arrested after a night on the town. Palmer and Maroney would be a national headline, the Staal brothers incident is nothing but a blurb on an inside page.

This line, from the Staal brother's agent courtesy of the TSN report, actually had me belch out a loud, bellowing laugh:

''Not to take anything away from the seriousness of it, it's what can happen when you get any group of 15 to 20 people together and there's loud noise.''

As a college student and avid sports fan, you can be sure that I have been in many a crowd of 15-20 people with loud noise. Do you know how many of them ended with me getting kicked out of an establishment and heckling passing motorists?.................

(Thinking........)

NONE!

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On a different note, it looks like the sport of cycling now has less credibility than baseball. Ouch.

It's a sad era in the sporting world when the only two sports with little or no controversy are Arena Football and Major League Soccer.

I blame Bucky Gleason.