What'd We Learn From Hardy Exclusive? Nothing
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By Mike Fisher
IRVING (105.3 The Fan) - Except for guessing that Greg Hardy memorized a go-to line (and maybe Adam Schefter did, too), folks who've paid close attention to the Hardy saga found little to learn from the much-ballyhooed ESPN "exclusive'' interview.
Repeatedly, Hardy — presently unemployed following a turbulent year in a Cowboys uniform — told Schefter that he took responsibility for "putting myself in that position,'' and the like. It was as close to "apologetic'' or "accepting of blame'' as Hardy got, which generally mirrors his frequent conversations with me over the course of the last year as it relates to his guilt in a 2014 domestic-violence incident in Carolina while a star member of the Panthers.
Schefter did get Hardy to insist he'd "never put my hands on'' girlfriend Nicole Holder, a claim that is newsy … but seems lodged somewhere between "illogical'' and "lying.''
But what the viewer does not know (and maybe ESPN doesn't, either) is that Hardy's status as a gifted-but-unwanted free agent isn't really about domestic violence. Word has spread around the NFL about what I've labeled "The Uptown Flu,'' which is Hardy's real problem — a lack of respect for the rules and for his Cowboys bosses and teammates that caused him to be unreliable.
Hardy told Schefter that he doesn't "want the drama,'' but I bet in his heart he knows that's not how this situation, or Hardy himself, works. He also said, "Being a Dallas Cowboy is not being a regular football player. The lights are on all the time.'' And while that may be true, that's not the problem here, either.
The problem is the line that Schefter used to analyze his 90 minutes spent with a person he does not really know. Schefter termed Hardy a "changed man,'' the sort of pleasant thing one might say after agent Drew Rosenhaus arranges for you to be the one to get the interview with his client.
But in fact, Greg Hardy hasn't "changed,'' not really, and in my visits with him, I believe, in a sort of twisted way, he's proud of that fact.
This week, when I tweeted that Hardy's "claim of innocence is NOT new. This ESPN story is about timing, not newness,'' Hardy retweeted me.
Why? Because the ESPN story isn't really exclusive, isn't really educational, isn't really new, and doesn't really change the views of the 32 teams who aren't signing him for reasons that were established before this interview — and are unchanged after it.
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