In further news of the high moral and intellectual standard set by professional sports, I learned from Steelers chairman Dan Rooney that the pursuit of sacraments mitigates assault and battery:

On March 8, Harrison was charged with assaulting his girlfriend, Beth Tibbot, in her Ohio Township home. According to a police affadavit, Harrison broke down a door, broke Tibbot’s cell phone in half as she attempted to call 911, then slapped her face with an open hand, knocking off her glasses. He was charged with simple assault and criminal mischief and faces an April 3 preliminary hearing before a magistrate in Bellevue.

But Harrison was kept on. Wilson, another guy who fondles dead pigs for a living, was let go. Why?

“I know many are asking the question of [why] we released Wilson and Harrison we kept,” Rooney said. “The circumstances — I know of the incidents, they are completely different. In fact, when I say we don’t condone these things, we don’t, but we do have to look at the circumstances that are involved with other players and things like that, so they’re not all the same.”

In Harrison’s case, Rooney said the player was trying to take his son to be baptized.

“What Jimmy Harrison was doing and how the incident occurred, what he was trying to do was really well worth it,” Rooney said of Harrison’s initial intent with his son. “He was doing something that was good, wanted to take his son to get baptized where he lived and things like that. She said she didn’t want to do it.”

Yes, that makes perfect sense. It’s a good thing for Beth Tibbot that Harrison wasn’t on his way to an extreme unction.

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