The Shots Heard 'Round the NFL

Of all the people in the NFL, who would've thought HE would be marred in a controversy.

My team, the Lions, just had a newly signed safety charged with battering his pregnant girlfriend, but Marvin Harrison is different. He's not the typical loud-mouth wide receiver that exercises on his driveway, hits people with cars, and smokes the Mary J.

He's a quiet, often transparent figure in the NFL tabloids, where arrests occur on almost a daily basis. I'd never heard a negative thing about him until last Friday, when he was supposedly involved in a shooting in Philadelphia at a place he owned. Was he really? Chances are, we'll never know the whole story.

According to ESPN.com, he is not a suspect in the shootings, and he and his agent have called the reports "erroneous."

According to various legal minds covering the story, "if your gun is used in a crime in the state of Pennsylvania, you're automatically charged, and most likely arrested."

I don't know what he would be charged with, but a Marvin Harrison mug shot would be something I didn't plan to see in my lifetime. A legacy-ruiner if any of it pans out to be true. Many people thought Marvin Harrison was one of the last good-guy receivers in the league today.

The evidence mounted recently on Harrison, as six of the bullet casings fired in the shooting belong to one of Harrison's guns, which is rumored to be one of his twenty. This could lead to a possible arrest in the future, but Philadelphia police still claim he's not a suspect, and he was only interviewed as a part of police procedure.

In today's world, a reader of a major sports website or news source can't flick or scroll through headlines without seeing steroids, drugs, or arrest in a headline. This shocking story of Marvin Harrison's alleged involvement with firearms spells out the inevitable question itself: Whether the allegations are true or false, depending on what one believes, who else is there to root for? Let's hope they're false. For the NFL, and pro sports in general.