Ray MacDonald. What's the big deal?

It appears not-so-old MacDonald might be watching his career farm going up in flames. E-I-E-I-O. His latest brush with the law over a domestic incident resulted in the Chicago Bears kicking him to the curb. This was after the San Fran 49ers had previously done so over prior, ahem, errors in judgment.

Is this a big deal? Depends on how one looks at it. The media certainly seems to think so. I'll get back to that.

We were force-fed the Ray Rice "elevator" video a few bazillion times. He still hasn't found a team but his production was going down as his age went up, so who's to say he'd be playing even sans "incident"?

Tom Brady and the New England Patriots dominated the news over "deflategate". A million dollar fine is chump change and it remains to be seen whether his 4 game suspension holds up. (Idle thought: How the heck can Roger Goodell preside over the appeal of the sentence he already handed down? What kind of kangaroo court is going on here?)

Adrian Petersen switched his kid a while back. Massive coverage. He's back with the Vikes.

Greg Hardy had his own problems. No video available, or we'd have been bombarded with that too, but Jerry Jones snapped him up for his Cowboys.

Aaron Hernandez is -- well-- not going anywhere for a good while. No video available to the public there either, but a pesky Murder One conviction normally has a way of ending professional football careers.

In the NBA playoffs, Al Horford of the Atlantic Hawks got ejected for a flagrant II foul for throwing an elbow to the head of an opponent while he was down. After getting a two-handed shove in the back (no foul was called) Dwight Howard of the Houston Rockets retaliated with a slap to the face of an opponent. Many howled for a flagrant II violation as well. Thing is, nobody was seriously injured, the Hawks are gone and the Rockets soon will be. So does it even matter?

Last time I looked, the NFL had 32 teams which equals out to about 1700 players. For a handful of them to get out of line and allegedly run afoul of the law represents nothing more than the same sliver slice of society as a whole. So what's the big deal? It's not like a major crime wave is going on.

In the NBA, there's a lot of stuff going on, particularly during the playoffs. The pressure is high and the competition fierce, but these guys are only human. There will be times when tempers flare and hard fouls are committed. So what's the big deal?

Major League Baseball has long had an unwritten rule that if you plunk one of our guys with a pitched ball, we're going to drill one of yours. Understandable? Sure. Does it make it right? Maybe not. Nevertheless, this stuff has been going on for over a hundred years and was an "acceptable" part of the game. But these days the media will not only insist on showing us a hundred replays of Slugger Joe getting one in the ribs, but bring in "experts" to remotely psycho-analyze what each player was thinking at the time. As if they have a clue. Please.

With the exception of Hernandez (and perhaps not even him, given how many murders are committed in this country everyday) all these incidents are no more than daily occurrences all over the country. No, this is not to justify wrong-doing of any sort, but just because it's an athlete doing it shouldn't make it that big a deal.

If a team has a "bad apple" on their hands, then just cut him and plug in somebody else. No need for all the "statements" and/or press conferences. That just fans the flames of the already pyrotechnic media looking to sensationalize something that is not unusual whatsover in the whole scheme of things.

I don't care if a starting QB gets popped for a DUI anymore than I would if it was my next-door neighbor. It happens. Maybe it effects their job, maybe not. But either way, no whining, and spare me the hype. Deal with it and move on.

If we didn't have a few bad apples here and there we wouldn't need jails, cops, and prosecutors. Last time I looked there were thousands of all of them. It's the nature of the species. Always has been.

So when some athlete gets in trouble, it should come as no surprise, and certainly not warrant wall-to-wall media coverage. It's not that big of a deal.

When I was a little boy, I remember JFK getting shot in Dallas. THAT was a big deal.

If Derek Jeter, Oprah, Ellen, Anderson, Rachel, Rush, and Alex Trebek all team up and decide to go fight with ISIS, now THAT would be an attention grabber.

But if we're talking about a misdemeanor here and a scrape with the law there amongst jocks, what's the big deal indeed?