Travis Henry Teaches You the Feds Are Serious People

I have faith in Travis Henry. I believe that in prison, he will discover a new person within himself through reading, the practice of the faith of his choice, and the long, sober hours of slience where he will have nothing do to but reflect on his life and what he's done with it. It could help him turn his life around, and I certainly hope it does.

I also believe he will get a woman pregnant with or without the benefit of a conjugal visit while he is jail, because that man is born to make babies, and not even barbed wire and walls can stop his genes' rush over left tackle and deep into the backfield of the human gene pool. He stares at a fertile woman for ten seconds and she gets morning sickness. He's just that good at what he does.

Henry will have plenty of time to think about all of this, and to impregnate women at a distance with his mind. His sentence of three years may seem harsh, especially when one makes the obvious contrast of Donte Stallworth's skimpy 24 day sentence in the Browns' receiver's DUI manslaughter charge.

The difference between the two cases, as Chris from Smart Football points out here:

Henry and Vick were sentenced in federal court, where the sentences are almost uniformly harsh (think Bernie Madoff receiving a sentence four or fives times his life expectancy). And, under the advisory Guidelines, there is some, but not a ton, of wiggle room. Stallworth on the other hand was sentenced in state court, where the rules vary and all bets can be off.

Another case of the boring and sometimes idiosyncratic law turning a good conspiracy theory regarding athletes getting away with bad behavior into a simple side effect of the legal system's quirks. Lesson learned: if you're planning to break the law in a serious way, don't. But if you have to, really try not to break any laws the Feds might consider near and dear to their hearts. They tend to be quite serious about them.                                              

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.