Phil Mushnick

Phil Mushnick

NFL

Criminal behavior overwhelms the NFL

Now that gritty-in-pink Breast Cancer Awareness Month has ended, the NFL’s sensitivities might turn toward a charity-should-begin-at-home cause. It can concentrate on a disease it has long misdiagnosed or left untreated to the point it’s now a Code Blue.

The NFL, plainly put, is being overwhelmed by creeps and criminals. Rosters are resplendent with bad guys, including three different murder-by-NFL-player cases since last season. Almost all of these creeps and criminals arrive directly from American colleges and universities.

By chronicled accounts, the Dolphins’ Richie Incognito was a renowned, recidivist creep while a full-scholarship athlete at Nebraska, an institution of advanced education that has been producing football-playing creeps and criminals for decades — in the 1980s (Irving Fryar, among others), 1990s (Lawrence Phillips, among others) and into this century with, among others, Ndamukong Suh.

Alfonzo Dennard is a second-season NFL defensive back, with the Patriots, a team that this year lost University of Florida man Aaron Hernandez to murder charges.

Days before last year’s NFL draft, Dennard was arrested — later convicted and incarcerated — for assaulting a cop who had been called to a 2:15 a.m. bar fight. While on probation for that, Dennard was arrested for a DUI. His college career ended with an ejection from a bowl game.

He played for Nebraska.

That makes Nebraska no different from the overwhelming majority of big-time, big-ticket American colleges that serve as fronts for sports teams and to service the pathetic needs of influential adult yahoos who demand an annual trip to a bowl game.

The twisted, growing sickness extends in all directions. Among those to have this week publicly condemned Incognito’s behavior was new ESPN football analyst Ray Lewis: “If I’m the head coach, that guy has to be removed from my team.”

Oh, the moral indignation! Yet, fines, penalties and an obstruction of justice plea in a double homicide didn’t prevent Lewis from pounding his chest in savage self-approval at the sight of opponents he’d just laid out with blasts to the head. He remorselessly claimed that’s how he plays “the game”— concussions are the other’s guy’s problem.

But the behavior of Incognito? Well, a man has to draw the line, somewhere. With Lewis it’s bullying. That’s disturbing to him.

More disturbing is ESPN, an NFL partner network, couldn’t wait to hire Lewis.

So evidence, including his own clothing, disappeared in a still-unsolved double murder; so he initially made himself unavailable to investigators before making a deal to testify; so he eventually paid off the families of the victims. Nobody’s perfect.

Lewis, University of Miami man, was the man for ESPN!

After all, the NFL, which will now aggressively pursue charges of gross, bigoted conduct — the violation of a teammate’s civil rights — by Incognito, chose Lewis as the man to appear in commercials to push NFL-licensed goods.

Such a preposterous, perverse story would be rejected as impossibly dark and detached fiction, yet the NFL and one of its biggest business partner networks were more than compliant in allowing it to happen — they made it happen!

That Incognito, college man, very likely is a career creep would be far more shameful if he wasn’t just the latest in a long, ceaseless series. It’s not, after all, as if the NFL or NCAA long ago determined to dam the flow or even plug a leak.

What were Incognito’s deterrents to being a creep? It couldn’t be what college did for him. It couldn’t be the NFL. It couldn’t be TV. It couldn’t be Ray Lewis, who now, as if ESPN couldn’t anticipate such grotesque farce, appears on TV to make shame-shame at players accused of misconduct.

Olbermann keeps putting the ‘bull’ in bully

While transient big-shot Keith Olbermann, back with ESPN, continues to regard himself as far above the fray, he’s right down there in the slop. He’s another sucker-shot, insult artist who can’t take the slightest poke in return. A bully.

And it was Olbermann’s great sense of great self-regard — Olbermann is Olbermann’s favorite topic — that this week sent him into an anti-Craig Carton and Boomer Esiason spew. They, too, had the gall to note, vis-a-vis the Richie Incognito story, that Olbermann also has a track record for an inability to play nicely with teammates.

Olbermann never misses a word written or spoken about him, then makes his public judgments on people based only on what they said or wrote about him. It’s the mark of the megalomaniac!

So Jimmy Dolan pulled the plug on the Knicks City Dancers so that they can undergo a “rebranding”? What are the going to return as, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese?

That pileup on the Belt Parkway, this week, seems to have coincided with Mike Francesa’s on-air claim, as per Richie Incognito, that he hates bullies.

Amazin’ how shady guys find Wilpon

The hedge fund owned by Mets’ part-owner Steve Cohen has been ordered to pay $1.8 billion in fraud convictions — so far. I know this is an impolite question, but are dirty dealers attracted to the Wilpon Family or is the Wilpon Family attracted to dirty dealers? Or is the attraction mutual?

Not all crowd shots are superfluous. Monday, during Bears-Packers, after a peek at the company that makes those “Cheese Head” hats, ESPN cut to three Bears’ fans wearing hats shaped as cheese shredders. Great stuff. Or is it grate stuff?

Is there no one in car dealer and former Giant Brad Benson’s life close enough to tell him that his funny, often vulgar radio ads are not the least bit funny? He’s now like, 0-for-30.

Two weeks ago, ESPN debuted a documentary on former Islanders’ owner and con man John Spano — against a live Islanders’ game. Tuesday, it debuted a documentary on college teammates and former Knicks Bernard King and Ernie Grunfeld — against a live Knicks’ game. Institutionalized neglect or just oblivious?

From reader Jed Tester: “My wife, Valerie (not a big football fan), suggests that Washington can keep the Redskin nickname if they just change their logo to a potato. Sigh.”

The online and radio-syndicated “John Batchelor Show,” Wednesdays are devoted to Asian geopolitics. This past Wednesday’s included a chat with Barry Beck. The former Rangers’ captain has, since 2007, been the general manager and coach of the Hong Kong Academy of Ice Hockey (JohnBatchelorShow.com).

If ESPN’s Jon Gruden ever asks for proof he talks too much, there was this, from Monday night: “If there’s one irreplaceable quarterback in this league, Aaron Rodgers is one of them.”