COWBOYS GIVE, GET DEAL

The NFL either punishes too harshly or not at all. It measures risk and reward in odd fashion. Its teams will gamble wildly or be ultra-conservative in today’s highly-charged climate.

All of this added up to a player considered to be a likely No. 1 draft pick not getting chosen in the draft at all. When NFL teams learned that LSU offensive tackle La’el Collins had to talk to the police in Baton Rouge, La., about the shooting death of a former girlfriend and her baby, they ran and hid.

No one said Collins was involved. Nothing linked him to the crime. But nobody drafted him, and then everyone wanted to sign him as a free agent. How calculating and cold.

Collins signed on Thursday with the Dallas Cowboys. Instead of a huge rookie deal, he got a three-year package worth about $1.65 million. Had he been chosen in the middle of the first round, his contract would have been worth about 10 times as much.

Collins, after his interviews with police and a clean polygraph, was not a suspect in the crime. A paternity test showed he was not the child’s father.

The Cowboys brought him to Dallas on Sunday night, love-bombed him at a dinner with owner Jerry Jones and a number of players, and reached an agreement. Collins has done nothing but say the right things. He has not expressed bitterness about not being drafted and even found positives in that.

“I got to choose. And I think that’s the biggest blessing I have received,” he said. “I got to choose the people I am going to work with. I got to choose the people that are going to help me become a better man in and out, on the field and off the field. And standing here today, sitting here today with my family and sitting here today with Mr. Jones, everybody, where else would I be? Where else do I want to be? Nowhere. I want to be here. I want to be a Dallas Cowboy and I am a Dallas Cowboy.”

Is he entirely out of the legal woods? The Baton Rouge police said Collins currently is “no more a person of interest than a neighbor would be.” Time will tell if an innocent person got tarred by an investigation and ultimately rewarded for his patience.
 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman .