Asshole Of The Week: Cedric Benson

Welcome to Asshole Of The Week, where every Friday your trusty Foul Balls editor picks out the one person from the previous seven days who makes him think, "Man, what an asshole." It could be anybody from an athlete, an owner, someone in the media, or just anybody who happens to catch my ire.

Yeah, so unlike last week, there wasn't any trouble trying to figure out who this week's Asshole Of The Week was going to be. No, Cedric Benson basically jumped way ahead out of the pack early Saturday morning when he was pulled over in Austin, Texas and hit with a drunken driving charge, and he never looked back.

I should start this off by saying that while I'm a little angry with Benson for what he did, I'm not naming him AOTW out of that anger. No, I'm naming Cedric the AOTW because he let me down. When the news first broke about the incident on the boat, I was immediately suspicious of what had happened.

So while every columnist in Chicago came firing out with the "Cedric Benson Must Go" pieces before any actual information surrounding the case came out, I posed the question that maybe Cedric was getting screwed, and perhaps that the whole truth wasn't being told by the police.

After all, it's not exactly crazy to think that a rich black man in Texas, and one who is pretty well known in the Austin area, might get some undeserved harassment from law enforcement once in a while. It's a part of our society and culture that these types of things do happen, no matter how hard we try to pretend that they don't.

So even though Cedric sucks at what he's paid to do, play football, I didn't think it was fair to immediately ride him out of town over one shady incident.

Then the witnesses came forward, corroborating Cedric's story, but you never read any columns about those.

Now, it wasn't exactly easy for me to stick by Benson through all of this, because I am a Bears fan after all. I do watch the games, and I do know that he sucks. Hard. I know that he was a waste of a draft pick and about $14 million., but that doesn't mean we should give up on that old "innocent until proven guilty" thing that's been so popular here in America all these years.

So when Cedric's dumb ass got into that car after having a few drinks and dinner with his girlfriend, his stupidity hurt me. It made me look stupid (well, stupider than usual) for ever defending him. I mean, really, how dumb can Benson be? It had hardly been a month since the incident on the boat, and you're going to get into a car after drinking? In the same damn town where there are cops whom you've been labeling as racists the last four weeks?

How dumb can one man be?

Call a freaking cab, man!

Then to make things worse, Cedric's lawyer, Sam Bassett, comes out saying that if you see the video of Benson's arrest that it's obvious Cedric wasn't that drunk. Really Sam? Because if you read Cedric's official statement after the incident, he admits he did drink and drive.

"I apologize for making the poor decision to drink and drive," Benson said in the statement. "Given the incident last month, it was a particularly bad decision. I have no excuse for this lack of judgment. Though I strongly believe that I am not guilty of any crime, I realize that the public and the Bears organization hold me to a higher standard. Though my local attorneys will continue to work hard to prove my innocence, I confess to using poor judgment. Please accept my deepest apology."

See! He said it right there in that first sentence. He made the poor decision to drink and drive. You're defense for this is that he wasn't that drunk? Christ, I hope nobody ever hires you to defend them on a murder charge.

"Yes, your honor, my client did stab the victim in the throat but he didn't stab her that hard. It was just a glancing blow."

Whether Cedric was actually drunk by his standards or not, as I know there are many of us who can drink a lot more than the legal limit and not be effected, all that matters is that he was drunk by the law's standards. There aren't different requirements for each and every person.

So Cedric, for making another stupid decision in what's been a long line of them, for making me look stupider than usual, and for making the decision to hire a lawyer that's actually stupider than you, you've earned the honor of being this week's Asshole Of The Week. Go out and get drunk to celebrate.

Just leave the car keys (and the boat keys) at home.