Dear Married Athletes

RIP Chris Henry.. He died in vain..

Next year would be the best time to renew your vows, buy flowers and candy, and take your wife out for every conceivable holiday under the sun. I'm serious. This morning, we received word that Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chris Henry died from a serious accident after a domestic dispute with his fiancee. Apparently, the five year player out of West Virginia hopped into the back of his pickup truck as his fiance drove away. About a mile down the road, Henry was found with life-threatening injuries.

Now, I won't make any assumptions as to the nature of the incident, or how or why it came about, but as soon as I heard the word 'domestic', it rung the bell of all bells. Whether it's Tiger Woods' whole situation, the Gilbert Arenas and Shaq saga, or Terrell Suggs pouring bleach on his wife, athletes seem to always be at odds with their women (sad that all of them are black). Athletes, some of you get married or engaged under the wrong pretenses. Whether you just got drafted, won a championship, got a new contract or whatever, it always seems like you guys go for broke with love at the wrong times. A lot of the time, I think your elopement is more out of circumstance than it is love. Perhaps children are involved, or the joy of success in professional sports puts a rosy blinder over the truth: YOU MIGHT NOT BE AS IN LOVE AS YOU THINK.

Seriously, guys. How many more Media Takeout and TMZ stories have to be released before you get the picture? Relationships (including marriage) take more than love. They take commitment, sacrifice and understanding, much like the sports that you play. If you don't have any or all of those working in your relationship, chances are that person is not right for you (or maybe not at that time). Whatever the case, Chris Henry clearly died in vain. He ran out of his house looking to clear his relationship up or to settle a dispute and ended up losing his life. Not to say that every argument in your household will end in fatality, but you get what I'm saying.

Why do you think the most successful athletes are NOT married?? Or better yet, why does their success preclude their marriage?? It's because as an athlete, you're so used to putting all of your effort into your trade (or I hope so), that at the end of the day, there really might not be anything left to put into a relationship. Kids might make the relationship more tame, but they still can't sweep inherent problems with the relationship under the rug. Athletes, get your situation squared away before you commit to someone else, especially if your maturity off the field pales in comparison to that on the field. Having an unstable partner behind you is worse than not having anyone behind you. I'm sure Tiger's plight spells it out perfectly for you...