An open letter to Browns wide receiver Josh Gordon:
As it apparently stands now, your are under indefinite suspension by the NFL until at least Aug. 1, at which time your situation will be re-evaluated. So there is still a chance – just a chance, mind you – that you could be reinstated in time to play some this season for the Browns or perhaps another team.
However, to even be considered – simply considered – for such, you have to keep yourself free and clean from drugs, as in completely and unequivocally clean, fully clean, squeaky clean, eat-off-the-kitchen-floor clean and cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die clean.
And therein lies the rub.
You can’t make a single, solitary mistake. No slip-ups, not one, lest you be prohibited from passing Go and collecting the millions of dollars that await you.
Everybody – and I do mean everybody in the whole wide world who knows of you and your long history off drug problems – is betting against you. If this were Las Vegas, they’d be betting everything they own – their car, their money, the ticket stubs from the Springsteen, Aretha Franklin, Taylor Swift, Rolling Stones, Beetles, Michael Jackson, Elvis and Four Tops concerts, and possibly even the souvenir program from the 1964 NFL Championship Game.
Yeah, everything.
Why? Because you’ve never proven that you can do it – stay clean – over the long haul. Rather, you’ve been like a shooting star in that you’ve done it – very well, in fact – but for only short periods of time before flaming out and disappearing over the horizon. However, the NFL – and life overall, really – is about consistency. Until you reach that level of being an every-day guy, so to speak, you’re not doing anything at all.
So while everybody is betting AGAINST you, Josh, they’re simply betting ON history. They’re betting the overwhelming odds, to be sure. It’s not much of a risk for them. It’s like betting on the possibility of death and taxes. They will happen. It’s inevitable.
As such, it’s nothing personal against you. It’s not that they dislike you. It’s just a math problem, one that doesn’t add up in your favor.
But you had an interesting tweet the other day when the news broke about your most recent issue. It portrayed the confidence you have in yourself, and that you are OK and ready to prove it.
That’s great to hear. You have to believe in yourself. If you don’t, then how can you expect anyone else to do so?
I tell you what, I’m going to take you up on that confidence. I’m challenging you to do it, to indeed get your act together and stay 100 percent clean, thus proving everybody – all the naysayers – completely wrong.
And if you do – if, in the end, you turn out to be right in this investment in yourself — then all of these people would be thrilled to death. They really would. For by doing so, you would be giving their team, the Browns, that much-needed, deep-down-the-field, big-play pass-catcher – one of the best in the game, in fact.
Much more importantly – and I need to emphasize this more than anything else in this letter – is that your being right would mean that you are beginning to get your life in order. That would dwarf anything you do on the football field. Anything!
Josh, this football stuff will end someday. It does for every player who has ever put on a uniform. So when it’s over and the time to retire has arrived, your life in the real world will continue – hopefully for many, many years – and you will have to be prepared to live it productively, and happily.
Aside from these drug problems, I think you’re basically a pretty good guy who has much to give to society. So I’m rooting for you. Many others are, too. But we do so while holding our collective breath, because we know it won’t be easy.
Forget the football, for your sake personally, I hope it all ends well for you. And if it does, then it will be your greatest achievement ever.
Good luck!
Sincerely,
Steve King
