Eric Gordon's Stupidity: When Will Young Athletes Learn?

Being in the public eye isn't necessarily the easiest endeavor when you're a professional athlete—and still growing up.

Recently Matt Leinart, the Arizona Cardinals quarterback, and Vince Young, the Tennessee Titans quarterback, were both scrutinized heavily by the media for posing for photos in which they performed activity that is generally seen as "normal" for today's youth.

However, these actions are not what athletes—especially those who are supposedly the faces of franchises—should be doing.

While I listened intuitively to what the big names of sports media had to say about the utter stupidity of these two young quarterbacks, as a 19-year-old I couldn't help but feel some sympathy towards Leinart and Young.

The activities they were participating in are all the rage at college campuses across the country.  Binge drinking and mingling with attractive women are exactly what just about every heterosexual male aged 17-25 wants to do in his free time—so as far as morality goes, these two have done nothing wrong in my eyes.

Letting someone photograph them performing such acts is where these two faltered and showed signs of immaturity, as well as a lack of judgement—and even after the media pounded the living hell out of this story, another young athlete let himself fall to power of a "friendly photo."

Eric Gordon, known to some as the 2008 Big Ten Freshman of the year and future NBA lottery pick and superstar, did what any normal teenage boy would love to do during his summer, as shown by this picture—he hung out with great-looking girls and went out partying and by no means is that wrong in my eyes.

The problem I have with my latest Facebook finding is not that EJ, as his friends call him, is around alcohol or girls, but that he let himself be photographed with the two temptations of teenage boys—only weeks before his name is called on draft day.

While what you've read thus far might seem contradictory, I would like to explain that Eric Gordon is only 19, while Young and Leinart are legal to drink in the United States (even though I am a strong advocate for a lower drinking age).

For Gordon to openly pose for a picture in which he totally disregarded the amount of alcohol placed in front of him is completely moronic.

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