Sportswriter Forgives Len Bias For Dying

This, from the Washington Post's John Feinstein, is just a stunning thing to exist. It is an argument that Len Bias does not deserve induction into the University of Maryland Athletics Hall of Fame because he died from a cocaine overdose.

There also is a character clause attached to the Maryland Hall of Fame. Apparently the committee decided 28 years was enough time either to look the other way or believe that dying of a cocaine overdose doesn't represent a major character flaw.

It gets weirder. Though Feinstein looks at Len Bias and still sees nothing but cocaine, he is magnanimous enough to suggest that we should give up our grudges against the 22-year-old who died suddenly and accidentally in 1986.

Unlike Rose, Bias should be forgiven. He was young and foolish and paid the most horrible price possible for his mistake.

Bias's death was the opening shot in sports' own (and similarly misguided) War on Drugs. Last year, Tommy Craggs wrote about how we still haven't been able to talk about these things like rational human beings. Feinstein's just the latest example.