SPORTS DAILY: Belting a woman should disqualify Joe Mixon from NFL

No surprise that more than a dozen NFL teams, including the Browns and Bengals, have met with Oklahoma’s Joe Mixon about possibly employing him.

The talented running back tantalized scouts by covering 40 yards in 4.43 seconds at Oklahoma's pro day this week. He had not been invited to the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis because, well, common decency dictated against it.

There is a suddenness to Mixon's game. Just ask the woman he knocked out with one punch, a crushing right hand that shattered her face and changed her life forever.

He did it in public so the video, thanks to a security camera, lives eternally on the Internet. NFL executives have had access to it for months.

Jail time inexplicably was avoided with a plea agreement and Mixon played for the Sooners the past two seasons after sitting out a year.

No, Mixon didn’t kill anybody. He’s not Aaron Hernandez. But is that where we draw the line these days? Is the pressure to win so intense that something as grotesque as knocking a woman out cold is dismissed by potential employers as simply a youthful indiscretion?

Someone will draft Mixon next month, possibly as high as the third round, because of his ability to run fast and do everything top-level running backs are expected to do. But Joe Mixon doesn't deserve a second chance, doesn't deserve an NFL career, no matter how much Brent Musburger or anyone else is pulling for him to make it.

Some scouts are calling Mixon the best running back in the draft.

I don’t care if he’s the next Jim Brown. I don’t care if he changes in a phone booth. I don’t care if he puts my team in the Super Bowl.

If Joe Mixon is on my team, I don’t have a team anymore.

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