2 years. 1228 points. 414 rebounds. Over 60 wins. 2 Elite 8 appearances and ACC Regular Season Championships. A 1st Team All-Conference Selection and an 2nd Team All-American one to boot. An ACC Freshman of the Year Award. No less than 7 game winning or go head shots in the final two-minutes of games. 2x Pre-Season All-American selection.

That's quite the line for a college sophomore, a 20-year-old kid who plays for one of college basketball's most storied and successful programs.  Some would call it impressive even.  In fact an untrained eye might look at these numbers and be more than willing to compare them to the early collegiate accomplishments of the greatest player to ever take a court. Might look at them favorably even.

But none of us will, and that's understandable. After all not even Harrison Barnes' most ardent supporters would argue that he is even in the same stratosphere as Michael Jeffrey Jordan, and not just because his field goal percentage is 10 points lower than his Airness' was, or his defensive awareness and playmaking ability don't jump off the charts like MJ's did.

No that's not it at all. You see, there's something about Harrison Barnes that we don't get. While the Jordan we all remember was forged by a competitive fire, an outwardly expressed desire and will to win that exceeded anything we had ever seen before, the cerebral Barnes just doesn't come across that way.  Even when he was burying game winning shots as a freshman, we saw more LeBron James in him than Michael. 

That's because, like with Mr. James, we've always been curious as to why Barnes isn't as good as we think he can be.  We criticize him for being too much of a jump shooter, instead of crediting him for being able to nail jump shots. We watch flashes of dominant athleticism and decry why we don't see them more often, instead of salivating at what just happened.  We judge Harrison Barnes against what we think he should or could be, instead of what he is.

And that too is understandable.  As LeBron James or Tim Tebow can tell you, in our culture when the hype machine is pumping--and you are even slightly contributing to it--expectations can, and will, quickly get out of your control.  When you announce your college choice via Skype or openly mention your desire to create and establish your own brand, we don't see an 18-year-old kid having fun or a 20-year-old kid on a quest to be an entrepreneur.  We see someone feeding the hoopla, and quickly step in to over run it.

And in the end maybe that's fair.  After all Harrison Barnes has twice been selected as a pre-season All-American (including the being the first freshman to ever be selected to the squad), but has never been close to being selected as a postseason one.  He entered the national scene as a freshman who was suppose to be the second-coming of Jordan, or at least Carmelo Anthony or Kevin Durant.  And we would all agree that he certainly hasn't been. His game has spoken on the court, but it hasn't always been as loud or as clear as we hoped it would be.

So, is that the difference between our perception of Barnes and our current view of Jordan's time at UNC? While Barnes was arguably the most heralded recruit ever, Jordan was far from a big name.  While the Tar Heels put the ball in Barnes hands and said "go win the game" from his first day on campus, Jordan was given time to develop and learn behind All-Americans like James Worthy and Sam Perkins.  While Barnes was going 8 for 30 in the final two games of the season this weekend--ultimately unable to will his team to victory without his point guard--Jordan was already sporting a NCAA title ring after draining the first "biggest shot for his life" in the 1982 championship game. While Jordan started coming through before we expected him to, Barnes often didn't when we most thought that he would.

So, what does all of this mean for Barnes' legacy in Chapel Hill? He'll probably be gone soon, off to the NBA and a fat contract as a top 5 draft pick (Think that's too high? Wait till your team is the one that passes on him). His jersey will hang from the rafters in the Smith Center forever (an honor he earned as a 2nd Team All-American selection of the National Association of Basketball Coaches).  He will always sport two conference title rings, and may have been a fluke injury to his team's floor general away from a Final Four and a National Title of his own.

Yet the consensus is that Barnes' time in powder blue has ended unfilled. No one thinks that is he is now, or ever will be, included in the same sentence as Michael Jordan. And he probably won't be.  But, does that already make him a bust?

Remember, Jordan wasn't in that sentence either in 1983. He was just a college sophomore.

A college sophomore a lot like Harrison Barnes.

Boom goes the dynamite.  For probably the ten-thousandth time in recent American sports history that obviously overused pop culture cliche fits current events like a glove. But this time it isn't describing a viscious dunk or a Floyd Mayweather suck pucker.  This time it's a metaphorical description of an NFL commissioner laying waste to one of his league's most successful franchises; to Roger Goodell literally blowing up the New Orleans Saints.

Yes destruction is nothing new to the loyal fans in the Big Easy, the same fans who yelled "Who Dat" as their Saints showed that you could flood their levees or level their homes, but you couldn't stop their spirit from Fat Tuesdaying its team to a championship.  On that fateful February night in 2010 their team hosted the Lombardi Trophy--and, in many ways, New Orleans was made whole again.

Which makes the recent developments all the more troubling.  One of the NFL's greatest stories, the truest from of a team and its community leaning on each other to restore their faith in the world in modern memory, has fallen by the wayside.  I wasn't in New Orleans when the bounty gate penalties hit, and I am truly happy for that. We've all seen that city suffer enough already.

Now there are certainly some of you who will claim that I am being over dramatic, and maybe I am.  After all losing Sean Payton for a year and a couple of 2nd round draft picks could obviously never compare to the most devastating natural disaster of 21st century.  We all understand that.

But we also understand what that team means to that city.  We watched Monday Night Football when the Saints returned to New Orleans.  We felt the energy and emotion through the TV.  We saw the tears on grown men's faces, their face paint running because they weren't sure that they'd ever get the chance to be here again.  That football would ever be back in New Orleans.

Well it was back, and behind Payton, Drew Brees and the rest of the Saints--it was better than ever.  Until the commissioner lowered his boom and arguably crippled the franchise.

Now, some of us will refuse to believe that the punishments levied by the commissioner are fair or justified.  Or some will want to paint Goodell as a corrupt, power thirsty dictator who just wants to flex his political muscle, while he leads a hypocritical organization that pretends to care about player safety when, in reality, it only cares about the almighty dollar.  And yet others just want to close their eyes and pretend like this never happened, like Sean Payton and the Saints are the same inspiring group of men who carried their city from its darkest days to one of its brightest.

And there is certainly merit in these viewpoints.  No educated observer of the NFL would try to wholeheartedly claim that the league's--or its commissioner's--motives are pure, or at least non-economically driven, here.  Just like no well-reasoned and logical argument can completely tear down all the good-will the Saints have rightfully built up through their inspiring success.  These are all true statements that can cause us to question or debate Goodell's treatment of "Bounty Gate."

But they shouldn't.  As I wrote earlier the actions of Payton, defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, GM Mickey Loomis and everyone involved was unconscionable. Football, and the head trauma it can cause, is way closer to being an epidemic than people realize.  The game will always be violent.  But it's turning deadly.  And anyone who encourages or helps to push the game towards a state where grown men cannot play without suffering major brain trauma should more than be held accountable for that.  That certainly includes Super Bowl Champions and Uplifting stories.  That certainly includes the New Orleans Saints.

Now before I conclude let me bring you back to the story of former Saint Steve Gleason. The man who made so many believe on that Monday Night.  A man who the city of New Orleans will never forget.

And also a man who is currently in the fight of his life with Lou Gehrig's disease.  A fight that he will someday lose.  A fight that evidence suggests was brought upon by his time butting heads on a football field.

And I want Sean Payton, Gregg Williams and everyone else involved to look the man that they coached and mentored in his eyes.  And I want them to offer him $1,500 to try and inflict that sort of pain on someone else.

A year out of football may seem like a steep price to pay.  But it's nothing compared to giving your life.

For close to 100 years, since president Teddy Roosevelt met with college presidents in a last ditch attempt to save the sport, we have known exactly what football is; a game centered around a big man carrying a leather sphere before a (probably) bigger man crashed into him with his head, neck, shoulders and chest.  It has always been a brutal game, a dangerous one even.  Players got hurt, at times tearing their ACLs or breaking their legs or, God forgive, crushing their spinal cords into oblivion and struggling to put one foot in front of another ever again.  But, since Roosevelt and company met in the White House, at least men weren't dying.  They took their licks and, thankfully, lived to fight another day once it was all said and done.  They saved the game.

Or at least they did for a while.  Now, as medical technology advances and we are able to get an inside look into the actual brains of professional football players, that may be changing.  The science may not have completely caught up to the sport yet, but we are all starting to understand the tole that repeated head shots, the kind that are more than prevalent in the game of football, can take on a man.  They certainly can hinder neurological developments.  They may cause severe and dangerous depression within the human mind.  And, as former saints wide receiver Steve Gleason can tell you, severe head trauma may even be linked to ALS disease.  So, even though all the facts are not yet known, this much is sure.  Football players are taking enormous risks with their long-term health.  And, with president Roosevelt long dead, one question remains.  Who is there to protect them?

You may say no one can, and there is some logic in that response. We all know that football is, by nature, a violent and devastating game, which necessitates that the men playing put their long-term health on the line. That will likely never change.  But what has changed is that the 230 pound defensive end who ran a 4.95 in 1970 is now a 285 pound chisseled monster who runs a 4.65.  Jack Lambert weighed 220 pounds soaking wet.  DeMarcus Ware weighs 265, runs probably (at least) 3 tenths a second faster in the 40 and benches more than 500 pounds.  The players have changed.  They are bigger, stronger, and faster than they've ever been before, and it's not even close.

So why shouldn't the rules of the game itself, both written and unwritten, change with them?  Just because the Oakland Raiders had a bounty on Lynn Swan in the 1970's doesn't make it OK for the New Orleans Saints to have one on Brett Favre in the 2010's.  Just because Jack Tatum slammed his head into receivers heads like a battering ram 30 years ago, doesn't make it OK for James Harrison to do it today.  Because, as viscous as Tatum and the Raiders were, they weren't capable of inflicting the damage that their predecessors are.  Say what you will, but those are just the stone cold facts.

And just because many players will shrug their shoulders and say "that's the risk we take" when asked about head injuries, that doesn't mean that we should accept that reality for them.  These are men who are (often) getting paid millions of dollars to be modern day gladiators.  Someone has to protect them from themselves, and realize that their ability to be in a brightly lit room for the rest of their lives without a shooting pain in their cranium is more important than getting a $1,500 bonus for trying to knock the opposing quarterback out cold.  Once they are done playing football, they cannot live in the dark forever.

So who cares if the ball was always kicked from the 30 yard line before.  If kicking it from the 35 will make the game safer, than I am all for it.  And you should be too.  After all when president Roosevelt and Alonzo Stagg got their hands on the game it was little more than a rugby like scrum.  Then they inserted something called the forward pass to open the game up.  The result?  Football as we know it today.  And a sudden lack of college kids dieing on the field.  Change was needed, and these men had the guts to step up and make it happen; to save the game.

So the question remains, does anyone out there have the same intestinal fortitude today?  Or are we still just fans who cheer when James Harrison turns Colt McCoy's brain into scrambled eggs or shrug our shoulders while Gregg Williams pays Jonathan Vilma to put a forearm into the side of Matt Ryan's helmet.  Football will always be violent, brutal and dangerous.  But it doesn't have to be deadly. 

So next time you bitch and moan about the "softening" of modern football, think about guys like Steve Gleason, whose body is being ravaged by an incurable disease that likely was triggered by his time on the gridiron. Next time you shrug your shoulders at a bounty system think about Sean Payton and Gregg Williams were coaching the Saints, watching as their former player was losing control of the body he had cultivated and maintained to become a professional athlete. Think about the fact that they stood by him, while refusing to stand against the same thing possibly happening to someone else.

In fact, directly or not, they encouraged it.  I'm not sure what Williams or Payton knew and what they didn't know.  But I do know one thing.  President Roosevelt would be ashamed. 

After all he's the one who taught us that in football, as well as in any other aspect of life, change is inevitable.  We can adapt and move forward, or we can refuse to budge until the game becomes a shell of its former shelf. Until young men are again lying dead on the field.

Because in the end, this sentiment still rings true. Just because that's the way it has always been done, doesn't mean that's the way that it always needs to be. 

Once again change is needed. Once again the game of football needs to be saved from itself. And that my friends is a stone cold fact.