The white guy, Chris Borland, was appalled by this approach.
Washington Post: Cris Carter delivered a curious message to players at the NFL’s 2014 rookie symposium, an annual event for incoming players: If you do the crime, be sure someone else does the time.
Wearing his Hall of Fame sports jacket, the ESPN analyst was supposed to explain to players some of the pitfalls that await the unsuspecting and unprepared. Instead, one of the messages he delivered was on the importance of having a “fall guy” at all times.
“In case y’all not going to decide to do the right thing, if y’all got a crew, you got to have a fall guy in the crew,” Carter said in a video headlined “Rookies learn life lessons from [Warren] Sapp and Carter” that’s no longer on the NFL’s Web site…
The video drew attention after an ESPN the Magazine article in which Chris Borland talked about the NFL culture and his decision to retire because of the dangers of head injuries. He described the symposium to Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada, who wrote:
“Get yourself a fall guy,” Borland says one of the former players advised. The former player, whom Borland declined to name, told the rookies that if they ran into legal trouble, their designated fall guy would be there to take the blame and, if necessary, go to jail. “ ‘We’ll bail him out,’ ” Borland says the former player assured them.
Borland was appalled. “I was just sitting there thinking, ‘Should I walk out? What am I supposed to do?’ ” he recalls. He says he didn’t leave the room because he didn’t want to cause a scene, but the incident stayed with him.
