Aldon Smith is back in the news, to reprise his long-running act as troubled/violent athlete.
Except that now we can make safe book that it’s about to become ex-athlete.
NBCSportsBayArea.com confirmed Sunday that the former 49er and suspended Raider is wanted in connection with an incident Saturday night in San Francisco in which he is alleged to have assaulted (including bitten) his fiancee. He has remained on the NFL’s suspended list since 2015 for prior incidents, and by now there is almost nobody who is going to push that he be taken off that list, let alone sign him to play football for money.
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SIGN UP HERE Not that the football is that important, mind you. There is one more victim of Smith’s struggles with himself, and whatever the cause of his difficulty with his demons, he will fight them on his own, which is the hardest fight of all.
But football is dead to him, and he to it. Whatever his glory days might have been – six years ago now – the talent/tolerance scale has been replaced with “why bother?” And for all those who still might think he has something left in the athletic tank (and there are some, because they are the same people who believe athletes never age, and that their best year is always their baseline year), that is done as well.
We are left, in fact, with only one way to think of Aldon Smith at all – as someone who clearly needs help to find his way to a saner way of living, for his sake and for his potential victims as well. If that means stricter forms of supervision (he has apparently checked into a rehab facility), then that’s what it means. Smith has to re-learn how to function in society without jeopardizing others, and that’s what’s important about his story now. That he stop being a story, and even stop being a cautionary tale, and start being a person again.
If he does so, it will be a far greater achievement than anything he ever accomplished as a football player. Aldon Smith needs this incident to be the bottom from which he finds lasting tranquility and equilibrium, and so do his victims.