Peter King Falls Ass Backwards Into "Debate" Over Rapists and the Hall of Fame

Peter King, the NFL writer known for his gotta-hear-both-sides perpetual motion machine of a brain—a reader charitably described him as someone who "typically sees the gray in situations"—has finally found his lone exclamation point in a sea of question marks. It's an odd, sad little hill on which to camp, let alone die. It's the "rapists should be considered for the Hall of Fame" hill. It is not a very popular campsite, for obvious reasons.

King's camping expedition was spurred on by former NFL safety Darren Sharper, who recently pled guilty to nine rapes in four different states. He will serve at least a decade in prison. He is unquestionably a bad man. Inexplicably, King has adopted a "I don't agree with your dirty doings here, but I will defend with my job your right to still be considered for the Hall of Fame" stance where Sharper—and presumably any other serial rapist with a borderline Hall of Fame case—is concerned.

This started with some tweets, then a column, then one of King's bulky mailbag columns, and then more tweets. King is still going strong, tweeting last Monday that he still can't hear you from inside his tent on the top of the hill with his fingers wedged in his ears.

Re all Sharper questions: My stance is a simple one. I believe all players should be considered for HoF based on football careers only.
— Peter King (@SI_PeterKing) April 14, 2015

King's reasoning is that Hall of Fame voter rules force him and his fellow voters to consider "football merits alone," the exact opposite of baseball's oft-debated character clause, which allows Hall of Fame voters to take into account anything from general press conference churlishness to that time the player ate a pizza with a knife and fork. "I know the public doesn't believe that we separate someone's ugly personal life from his football life," King wrote, "but that is what our bylaws tell us to do, and I know at least that is what I do."

Amazingly, King isn't doing this because he thinks Sharper merits election to the Hall of Fame. King has already stated he won't vote for Sharper because he wasn't a good enough football player. So this whole debate is something King could have easily dismissed—or at least sidestepped—by saying truthfully that he wouldn't vote for Sharper to save himself the predictable and justifiable backlash. Instead, he decided to make the wobbliest of stands on this least significant and most academic of issues. "You also have to understand our problems in drawing a line somewhere with the candidates for the Hall of Fame," King wrote. Do we really?

King is mistaking a cliff for a slippery slope. Like a strict constitutionalist, he's absolving himself and other voters of making moral judgments under the guise of principled adherence to codified laws. There is no room for judgment of moral character in the Hall of Fame, King argues, which is a perfectly fine opinion to have. But to assert exceptions can't be made for particularly heinous crimes is almost too obtuse to believe considering we're talking about a sports award.

Incredibly, King is making this argument about the same league and sport that has made morality a contract clause. As a reminder, this is the same NFL that just revamped its Personal Conduct Policy in the wake of a massive public relations debacle resulting from its inability to show even the slightest perspective or sensitivity in a domestic violence case. The NFL routinely punishes players before criminal proceedings are complete and reserves the right to punish outside of the law; the single lesson Commissioner Roger Goodell says he has learned from his league's shameful year was that the league needs to rely less on law enforcement. Goodell, for his part, makes moral judgments all the time, and disciplines and fines players based upon his brand management instincts. If that same player is considered for the Hall of Fame, the voters are instructed to ignore those same transgressions. Two extremes, no middle ground.

But this—all of this, all of Peter King's tweets and mailbag replies and haughty principles—it's not about anything important. It's about the Hall of Fame, something Peter King cares far more about than almost anyone else. Regardless of whether he gets voted in, Darren Sharper will still be in jail and will still have his penis monitored for the next two decades. The Hall of Fame is not important; not to Darren Sharper, not to the women he raped, and not to many of us.

The saddest thing about King's persistent insistence, here, is that he has proven himself right. If Hall of Fame voters can't trust themselves to weigh the relative importance of a serial rapist's crimes against his football career—which, it should be reinforced, is not hard—then neither should we. It's another reminder that the most prominent voices in professional sports are often the least deserving of one. We know Darren Sharper was never a Hall of Famer, and he will always be a rapist. Thankfully, we will never need Peter King to tell us that.