DeAndre Levy, despite a two-year run of serious injuries, remains a star linebacker for the Detroit Lions when he’s healthy. He’s a talented sideline-to-sideline player with a signature beard and an outspoken personality, prone to point out the hypocrisy in the NFL’s treatment of head injuries. But as he gets ready to return to the playing field after his latest knee injury, his latest public statement is a new level of controversial.
Levy played his college ball in Wisconsin, and he discussed his time there in an interview with Men’s Journal:
[Levy] was most famous for a 2006 play against Penn State, a sideline tackle that accidentally drove him into coach Joe Paterno, breaking JoePa’s left leg. Ten years later, Levy now calls that incident “my proudest moment in college,” as history has since revealed Happy Valley’s sad secrets. “That dirtbag, man,” says Levy of Paterno, who was recently implicated as being aware of child sexual abuse committed by his assistant Jerry Sandusky as early as 1976. “We’ve gotta stop prioritizing sports over humanity,” says Levy. “Just because somebody can throw a football or coach football, they’re excluded from their wicked acts.”
It’s not all that controversial to denounce Joe Paterno for his unwillingness to stop a child molester in his employ, but admitting delight and pride in physically hurting that person is something else entirely. And of course, if you remember the play, you’ll recall that Levy didn’t do it on purpose; he’s just happy at the result in retrospect.
Levy is likely to hear about it from the legions of #WeAre folks on his social media accounts, but they’ll be ignoring his warning to look at humans as more than their contributions to the football field. If you read the rest of his interview, you can see how he puts that into practice.
(Via Men’s Journal)
