Let’s Rolle On If We Could Please

Antrel Rolle made some statements the other day about his distaste for the crowd booing the Giants after the first half of play against the Jaguars. We covered it, we talked about it, it should have been over. But then he said something to the effect of: “You don’t boo soldiers who’ve come home from Iraq” and all hell has now broken loose.

He’s issued a press release through the Giants apologizing, admitting it was a poor comparison, the works. Everyone from the Giants beat writers to communications officials were all over the apology — I’ve sat back and thought about what I want to say about Rolle’s comments.

Part of me wants to let it go, without comment. Part of me says “Welcome to NY”, and another part of me wants to figure out why this has become such a big deal this week. It inevitably is going to be a HUGE distraction from the game now… the game Rolle admitted he played for a living and how it has nothing to do with serving time in the military. Let’s just get this whole disgusting thing over with and “Rolle on” shall we?

But I know this is going to be brought up again and again, I have no doubt it’s going to be mentioned as another form of Tom Coughlin losing discipline in the locker room, how it reflects poorly on the Giants front office, etc, etc. But nothing could be further from the truth. Tom Coughlin and the Giants are a class A organization, they celebrate the troops every year for Veterans Day. They are an extremely charitable organization, and believe me there are countless acts of gratitude and philanthropy stemming from the very top of the organization right down through the players — this needs not be blown out of proportion.

We’ve gone from Redskins talk to Red Alert media craziness in less than 2 days… welcome to NY indeed. So this is all I want to say about the Antrel Rolle situation, and by bringing it up I realize I’m only adding fuel to the fire in some ways. But let me end on this note and have it be the lasting impression you take from this post:

The Redskins are coming to town this weekend, it’s an extremely important divisional game that could be the difference between playoffs and no playoffs this year for the Giants. It would be an absolute shame to lose sight of what’s important for the team and why we cover them by over-analyzing gaffes. I accept Rolles apology and intend to move on without giving this more attention.