Whether Lynch was the driver or not, it certainly sounds like a DUI. First, drunks don’t exactly have the clearest thought processes. Second, drunks generally know they shouldn’t be driving so they have a motivation to drive away. Whomever was behind the wheel had probably knocked back a few and it won’t take cops long to find out if Lynch was out on the town. If he was in the area and it was his car he’ll basically have to prove that he wasn’t the driver…and it’s far harder to prove you’re innocent than it is for the cops to point the finger. Even if Lynch was the passenger he won’t be out of the woods.

I’d say this makes Omon a lock to make the roster.

Whoever was dumb enough to pull the pin on the grenade and just drop it at their feet should have to suffer the consequences. That’s called accountability. Whoever was driving the car knew what they did was wrong. If Marshawn Lynch is responsible for the accident I would be a lot happier with him admitting it, rather than lying and hiding behind a friend who’s not responsible. It’s bothers me that, just because he’s an important football player on a team we like, you would overlook proper justice. I know the world’s not a perfect place but think about what you’re saying, my friend.

You have to have someone to arrest, Cinga. The driver and car weren’t at the scene and literally could have been anywhere in the western New York area by the time the cops found out it belonged to Lynch.

The story doesn’t say it was a DUI but that is a reasonable supposition. Why else flee the scene of an accident? By the time the driver is found (and the driver WILL be found unless Lynch’s car was stolen) his blood alcohol level will have dropped—possibly below the legal limit for DUI.

make predictions on jail time and suspension at this time. There are no facts on the table…and in this country he is innocent until proven guilty. The kid will be fine. Lets let it all play out first. Maybe someone of his posse was driving….let’s hope at least.

Been 14 years since I left Buffalo. Is Channel 2 still on Elmwood near Chippewa?
Might be why they got wind of this before anyone else.

He left the scene of an accident. He might have been ticketed or something (maybe fines or community service), but I don’t remember there being any legal punishment. Goodell didn’t do anything.

And also, if Marshawn wasn’t in the car, he isn’t at all responsible.

What does the track record of other Bills players have to do with Marhawn Lynch?

Also is that absurd to assume that there is a chance that Marshawn wasn’t driving? I’m sure he is surrounded by a group of friends at all times and they probably treat him like royalty. Haven’t you ever gone out with a group of friends and driven someone else’s car to or from a bar? Or haven’t you ever let a friend drive you home because he was less drunk than you? Marshawn probably owns more than one car, I doubt he cares if someone other than himself is driving.

The whole concept of a high character, blue collar team is one that is almost entirely fan driven. The Bills talk about character as much as every other team in the league. Personally I’m tired of all this character stuff anyways. I don’t care If my team’s players like to drink downtown during the offseason. That has nothing to do with character, how much was everyone on this board drinking when they were 23? I think the character the Bills look for is self-motivated, hard working players who buy into the team concept. The Bills want players who are well liked in the locker room and give everything they have out on the field. Also the Bills currently have 80ish players on the roster right now. Pre potential Lynch injury the only public legal run-ins were Roscoe’s DUI, Stroud’s HGH and Hardy’s issues. You can’t judge the Bills for waiting until season’s end to dump Hargrove. Haggan was suspended after his time with the Bills.

I’ve never been arrested nor am I a heavy drinker—two in an evening is my limit. As a teacher, which I became at 22, I can’t afford to get my face in the paper in any sort of negative connotation. Since my employment (and, thus, paycheck) is dependent on me being a stand-up citizen I am a stand-up citizen.

Factor in that football players make a minimum of 5 times what teachers do and I don’t think it’s too much to expect them to conduct themselves in a responsible manner. They can have fun, drink and date smoking hot chick after smoking hot chick. All they have to do is know where the line is and not cross it….and thereby ensure that those fat checks (way better than fat chicks) keep rolling in.

My paycheck should depend exclusively on how well I do my job but it depends on that as well as a host of other things. Teachers contracts, in NM and other states as well, contain moral turpitude clauses. Basically, if I get busted for pretty much anything the school considers to be an ethical lapse the school can kick me to the curb. I could be the NM teacher of the year and I’d still get canned if I got busted for solicitation of a prostitute.

I’m not whining about the reality that my off-duty activities can impact my employment status. The school districts have something of a legitimate point in that teachers who have been publicly shamed tend to lose classroom effectiveness. The larger piece of it, naturally, is that the districts don’t want to deal with parents angry that their kids are in a class with a whoremonger, wife beater, etc. The districts really don’t want those parents pulling their kids out of school, since districts get money based on how many butts are in the seats every day.

Hey, doesn’t that sound familiar? Doesn’t the NFL have a point in suggesting that players dealing with public shamings and legal fiascos might not be at their best on the field—thereby hurting the game? Doesn’t the NFL dread dealing with fan discontent and possibly fans turning off (gasp!) the TV when some douchebag is in the game? Aren’t football teams worried that having laughingstocks on the field might reduce the number of butts in seats? I think the answer to each of those questions is a resounding “Yes!”

None of the above, by the way, should be inferred as a slam on Lynch. Neither, by the way, was my previous post…which should have been obvious as I didn’t even use Lynch’s name. We don’t know if he was even there. The point was more general than this latest incident.

By the way, Buffalonian, I’m with you on merit pay for teachers. My loathing for teachers unions and their knee-jerk protection of awful teachers is almost boundless. Bad teachers need to be axed just like bad salesmen or politicians or strippers.

This is one of my favorite stories that give people a small taste>

The Blueberry Story: The teacher gives the businessman a lesson

"If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn’t be in business very long!"

I stood before an auditorium filled with outraged teachers who were becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had entirely consumed their precious 90 minutes of inservice. Their initial icy glares had turned to restless agitation. You could cut the hostility with a knife.

I represented a group of business people dedicated to improving public schools. I was an executive at an ice cream company that became famous in the middle1980s when People Magazine chose our blueberry as the "Best Ice Cream in America."

I was convinced of two things. First, public schools needed to change; they were archaic selecting and sorting mechanisms designed for the industrial age and out of step with the needs of our emerging "knowledge society". Second, educators were a major part of the problem: they resisted change, hunkered down in their feathered nests, protected by tenure and shielded by a bureaucratic monopoly. They needed to look to business. We knew how to produce quality. Zero defects! TQM! Continuous improvement!

In retrospect, the speech was perfectly balanced – equal parts ignorance and arrogance.

As soon as I finished, a woman’s hand shot up. She appeared polite, pleasant – she was, in fact, a razor-edged, veteran, high school English teacher who had been waiting to unload.

She began quietly, "We are told, sir, that you manage a company that makes good ice cream."

I smugly replied, "Best ice cream in America, Ma’am."

"How nice," she said. "Is it rich and smooth?"

"Sixteen percent butterfat," I crowed.

"Premium ingredients?" she inquired.

"Super-premium! Nothing but triple A." I was on a roll. I never saw the next line coming.

"Mr. Vollmer," she said, leaning forward with a wicked eyebrow raised to the sky, "when you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?"

In the silence of that room, I could hear the trap snap…. I was dead meat, but I wasn’t going to lie.

"I send them back."

"That’s right!" she barked, "and we can never send back our blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant. We take them with ADHD, junior rheumatoid arthritis, and English as their second language. We take them all! Every one! And that, Mr. Vollmer, is why it’s not a business. It’s school!"

In an explosion, all 290 teachers, principals, bus drivers, aides, custodians and secretaries jumped to their feet and yelled, "Yeah! Blueberries! Blueberries!"

And so began my long transformation.

Since then, I have visited hundreds of schools. I have learned that a school is not a business. Schools are unable to control the quality of their raw material, they are dependent upon the vagaries of politics for a reliable revenue stream, and they are constantly mauled by a howling horde of disparate, competing customer groups that would send the best CEO screaming into the night.

None of this negates the need for change. We must change what, when, and how we teach to give all children maximum opportunity to thrive in a post-industrial society. But educators cannot do this alone; these changes can occur only with the understanding, trust, permission and active support of the surrounding community. For the most important thing I have learned is that schools reflect the attitudes, beliefs and health of the communities they serve, and therefore, to improve public education means more than changing our schools, it means changing America.

Copyright 2002, by Jamie Robert Vollmer

Keuka brought that up too. I’m sure there were people helping her when she was on the ground. The accident happened at the corner of Chippewa and Delaware. There were probably like 30 people who saw it happen. Everybody can’t spring into action and be a hero. The 15 minutes is just a timeframe of how long she was on the ground, it has nothing to do with how long she went without help from strangers or the ambulance attendants.

The analogy I used was a football game. if you read a recap of a game where a significant player is hurt it would read: Joe Runningback suffered an apparent knee injury. Play had to be stopped for several minutes. He walked off the field without assistance. That obviously doesn’t mean the player got hurt, laid on the ground while everybody ignored him for a few minutes until he got up on his own and walked off the field.

I don’t know why we would assume that the hit and run victim wasn’t immediately helped by people. The reporter was just working with the facts that he could personally validate. He talked to the bar employees and they were able to give a timeframe. The story that WGRZ wrote wasn’t about the victim, or the accident itself. All that really matters in the story is Lynch’s involvement. It wouild simply be unneccessary to write: the victim was immediately helped by a man in a blue sweater and what appered to be his girlfriend for 90 seconds until the ambulance arrived. The ambulance attendants spent 12 minutes talking to her, treating her injuries and making sure there wasn’t a previously unnoticed serious injury before letting her walk to the ambluance. All that mattered to the writer (and most all the readers) was the condition of the victim. Since the reporter didn’t have any details, he gave what he knew. She was on the ground for 15 minutes but was able to walk to the ambulance on her own. The reporter is just implying that she was injured, but not seriously and he did so without providing information that he had to be 100% correct about.

Some of what you say is true, but if your read that story you should understand why holding teachers accountable for students performance is not fair to teachers. I have seen elementary kids who sleep through the morning because they were up watching TV all night, afraid for the safety of a mom, sibling, or themselves, kept awake by their parents cooking Meth, etc. How about holding parents responsible for sending kids to school in a teachable condition? Teachers and administrators have no authority in their schools anymore. Kids are not held responsible for their performance or behavior for reasons to complex to get into here, but it comes down to ridiculous law suits that have districts running scared. I don’t know how it works in NC, but I do know that pubic education and corporate America are two vastly different arenas no matter where you are. You will never fix public education until communities decide to empower their schools again.

i’m not sure what you guys are disagreeing over. My post here might be a stupid idea because the last thing I want to talk about is politics or public education but …...

I think Buffalonian is saying that teacher’s unions are pretty ridiculous. Good teachers should get raises while bad teachers should be fired. I believe most of us agree with that.

I think Joe P. is saying that you can’t always judge a teacher by the results of their stundent’s test scores. I believe most of us agree with that too.

Now that was probably an over-simplification, but where exactly is the disagreement?

i have no idea