"That incident wasn't football, it was criminal," says Bill Price, former district attorney for Navarro County who now runs a private practice in Dallas. "At the very least, it should be prosecuted as simple assault. In Texas, it could easily be classified as aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Football players can normally expect to get the crap knocked out of them. But as for getting kicked in the face by a player clearly exhibiting an intent to harm, I've never seen anything like it."
The NFL has, sort of. In 1973 Cincinnati Bengals running back Boobie Clark delivered an after-the-whistle, away-from-the-play cheap shot to Denver Broncos safety Dale Hackbart. Hackbart sufferied fractured C4, 5, 6, and 7 vertebrae on his neck, an injury that ended his career. Hackbart filed a lawsuit over the incident. Hackbart v. the Cincinnati Bengals became a precedent-setting case.
After initially losing, Hackbart won a settlement after an appeals court ruled that in a professional football game, an intentional infliction of an injury by one player on another is grounds for a lawsuit. In an ever-softening league that now protects quarterbacks from hits to the head and hits below the waist, new commissioner Roger Goodell needs to ring in his reign by taking a tough stance against Haynesworth's senseless violence with a fine and a suspension. --Richie Whitt
Bonus Video: Albert Haynesworth Stomps on Cowboys Center Andre Gurode
