Travis Henry does a great Smokey from Friday impression: Broncos running back likely faces lengthy suspension

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Travis Henry apparently likes weed.

(story: http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3049721)

He likes it enough to not play football for a year, he likes it enough to throw away millions of dollars, he likes it enough to lose his livelihood; he likes it enough to jeopardize the future of his, *ahem* nine children by nine different women across four states. Henry at least likes smoking more than paying child support for those children, as various judges have had to order him to pay child support for at least seven said kids.

Yes, Travis Henry is all about making intelligent decisions.

But the greater question hangs over this story like a billowing cloud of ‘erb flowing out of a Graffix bong: Why can’t people like Travis Henry learn to stop smoking marijuana?

Before someone chokes out the name Ricky Williams – who ironically enough this week was targeted by a Denver pro-marijuana group to play for the Broncos – why can’t these athletes realize that the cost of inhaling goes way beyond the cash they plunked down for their dub sack?

He signed a five-year, $22.5 million deal in the offseason with the Broncos, how much do you think he’ll see of that now? Probably less than half, if he’s extremely lucky.

I had a friend in college who smoked marijuana on the regular in high school, and also the first year of college. Then, he stopped. He didn’t miss it, he didn’t change his personality, except for that he took up running. These days he’s a veteran of several marathons. Now without sounding too anti-drug, he probably would never smoke before an upcoming race, or really ever.

“That’ll take me off my pace,” he’d say, refusing to enter the puff-puff-pass rotation.

Another friend of mine smoked pretty heavily in high school, but stopped cold turkey senior year. Hasn’t touched it since claimed he could feel himself getting more stupid.

Now if my first friend mentioned, who’s making ZERO dollars to run marathons, can have no desire to smoke, and my other friend can also avoid smoking, why can’t Travis Henry, who is making $22.5 million and has already been suspended once by the NFL – stop smoking marijuana? He knows the next suspension is a year, minimum. He also has watched the litany of players suspended this year by Commissioner Roger Goddell, who has taken a strong “no tolerance” policy toward drugs, arrests, violence and everyone’s favorite, animal fighting that involves gambling.

This is why in August I said I wouldn’t pick Henry for fantasy football. If you are over the age of 21 and you fail a drug test that you know is coming, we can infer that you smoke fairly regularly. No one starts smoking marijuana at 23 years of age. Either you did it in college and/or high school, or you didn’t. Either it follows you from there, or it doesn’t.

I’ll break this down into a hypothetical situation involving two 25-year-old friends:

Friend A has never smoked in his life.

Friend B smoked occasionally in high school and college. He hasn’t smoked now in at least a year.

If you are betting on who would fail a drug test in the next year, who are you betting on? Exactly – Friend B. And that’s why Travis Henry was a scary fantasy football pick. People don’t START smoking weed by then, and if they do it regularly by the time they hit mid 20s, they probably are going to continue sporadically.

Personally, if I needed to impair my mind and I had TWENTY FIVE MILLION DOLLARS riding on the need to NOT SMOKE ILLEGAL SUBSTANCES, I’d go upstairs and grab an ice cold case of Newcastle and get stupid.

Next time you grab a cold one, take a second and toast to all the poor fantasy football owners who just got screwed by Travis Henry.
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Elliot is a journalist in an Associated Press-member newsroom, yet he openly wishes that he was getting paid to write about fantasy sports, even if it was just enough to pay for parking. You can reach him here.

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