You should be ashamed. I've barely been able to read the coverage of this dog-fighting scandal, but I know the basics. The other people charged in the case were flipped, and were flipped against you. If they're not lying, the things you've done are despicable. I can't imagine being a person who didn't know that fighting two dogs to the death of one of them was wrong. I can't imagine rooting for someone on a football field who didn't know such a thing. I especially cannot imagine how you could possibly kill an animal for being a sub-par fighter. Oh, I understand that the dogs you bred were vicious and unfit for any life but the one you bred them for, and that perhaps is the cruelest thing of all. Those dogs you executed were probably dogs that would have had to been put down (though perhaps with some mercy and sorrow for their loss), because you made them into monsters.
In my head, I try to imagine what you could have possibly been thinking. I don't any of the details of your life, so I don't know if you were raised in a place that condoned dog fighting as ethically okay. I don't know what kind of life you were exposed to after you became a college student and athlete, and then after that, when you became a pro athlete. I can't believe, though, that anything you experienced after childhood led you to believe that it was okay to mistreat animals.
You are a failure. You're a failure because you bred dogs for fighting. You're a failure because you lied to everyone about doing it. You're a failure because you took a blessed life and threw it away on the backs of scarred and bloody dogs. You've failed us, NFL football fans, and your family and friends. You've failed an organization that believed in you, and as I see it, a league that wanted very much for you to be a success. And of course, you've failed yourself. But I suspect (or hope?) that with at least 1 year in prison looming in front of you, you understand that now.
What I don't know, though, is if you understand why dogfighting is wrong. I don't know, and will never know if you understand how grave this charge is. You can apologize, you can enter a plea bargain, and you can serve your time. But I'll never be able to look at you with anything less than disgust. I hope, for football's sake, it doesn't allow you to ever come back and play another game. I hope someone makes the decision that some wrongs are too wrong to let go.
With regret, A football fan
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