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In the latest edition of Dan’s Website Whispers, he takes a look at the Erik Ainge situation and an interesting angle regarding the lockout . . .
I’m not taking anything away from the terrific piece Rich Cimini did on Erik Ainge’s substance problems, but I’ve known about this for a while (perhaps Rich did also).
Maybe my heart got in the way of being a reporter, but the guy was such a wreck, I just didn’t want to report it.
What Cimini did was fine – Ainge wanted it out there.
A shop-owner in Madison told me a while ago that Ainge was in the store, all messed up on drugs.
I also heard from some people in the Morristown area about his drinking problem.
But I took a pass on writing about it.
I felt it was too TMZ.
When I started to hear this stuff, I have to admit I was very surprised, after all, he was an Ainge – when you think of that family, you think of squeaky clean Mormons.
But this guy was living a life that was the polar opposite of his image.
And the Jets scouting department, usually one of the most thorough in the league, deserves a little criticism on this one.
Granted it was a fifth round pick, so we shouldn’t overdue the criticism, but how do miss the myriad drug issues he had during his time in Knoxville?
Whatever – that is in the past now.
Ainge is smart to not jump back into football just yet.
His problems are so deep-seated, he’s still clearly not ready, just yet, even when the lockout ends, and he knows that.
I will say this. Even though he was all messed up while with the Jets, I interviewed him a lot, and never sensed a problem. He also always friendly, cooperative and gave terrific, insightful answers. He seemed pretty normal to me, and he guess he fooled a lot of people.
It will be really interesting to get Steve Weatherford’s (pictured above) take on this tragedy. He is close with Ainge, and saw a lot of this troubling behavior first hand. And Weatherford is a real straight-shooter . . .
It’s really interesting what is going on with NFL team websites.
As we mentioned in the latest issue of JC Magazine (on newstands now), the current players don’t exist right now.
The websites are mainly focusing on the draft and nostaglia. I got this from an editor of an AFC website (not the Jets).
Once the players are picked, if there is still a lockout, those draft picks basically won’t exist.
I’m not kidding.
And before anything appears on these team websites, front office executives, often lawyers, have to go over the content, with a fine tooth comb, and approve it.
Needless to say, traffic is way down.
The league and teams are very, very uptight about anything being written on one of their sites being used against them by a very litigious union.
Think about it this way – if the UAW locked out the auto workers, or they went on strike, would the PR department of the auto companies being doing features on the workers on their websites?
No way.
