why sportswriters are cynical

While Marvin Lewis was doing a masterful act of contrition/spin job for the fawning local media yesterday (myself included), he was signing a guy who'd spent almost 300 days in jail. While Lewis was promising to be a hardass, he was bringing in a convict. Maybe he should become a prison warden.

Look, I like Lewis a lot. Away from the mass media feeding sessions, he's pleasant and straight up. He maintains that off-field junk has nothing to do with onfield performance, so signing Jason Berryman isn't exactly inconsistent with that. But to do what Lewis did yesterday does nothing but add another layer of mistrust. I wasn't born cynical. There is no cynical gene that I'm aware of. People in this business become cynical because of the people they have to deal with. Cynicism is the best armor we have to keep from looking foolish.

Lewis can bring in safecrackers, con men, tax cheats and arsonists, for all I care. Just be honest about it, and be prepared for the backlash when you don't win. And don't be as incredibly disingenuous as you were Tuesday, when you so sincerely addressed the character issue and swore it would be dealt with.

For the record, Berryman was an outside LB at Iowa State before they kicked him off the team in '05. In '04, he served nearly 300 days, on assault and theft convictions. No one took a chance on him, until now. It's hard to see Marvin Lewis in the same light today as I did yesterday.