Matt Leinart has a child out of wedlock as well.

It's sad but true what you're saying, that if the author wasn't black (not just white), he'd be fired. But I don't agree that the article is in poor taste. Smart DOPPs build teams with players of a certain character, and stay away from distractions.

There's a legitimate point in taking a look at how this guy conducts himself off the field. 2 baby mommas with a possible third? Dude, use a freakin' condom! 

freeman in jumping to some conclusions here with the particular case of McFadden, but i definitely get his point.....

beyond sports, where it is more than rich or soon to be rich pro athletes having kids outside of marriage,  it is the problems of kids growing up without two parents, single moms struggling to provide economically to raise their children, and the government having to bail them out, that are having a huge effect on our country, economically and educationally.....

i definitely see the double standard with the media between the white and black athletes...to see news outlets and web sites congratulating brady on his getting both a model and an actress pregnant was pretty pathetic.....

A players decision making and responsibility level are aspects which GM's obviously take into account but they are obviously balanced with and against the raw physical talent.

In regards to McFadden specifically obviously he has his issues but he was not a problem during his career at Arkansas in fact his bar incident was an unfortunate situation not a reflection on character or in anyway a repeated event.  Has he been irresponsible in his dealing with women?  Absolutely but a great percentage of players that will be drafted are.  A better word to describe his predicament is unfortunate his decisions turned out so bad on a personal level.

The issue of comparison to Lawrence Phillips is interesting but way off point Phillips was troubled in high school and throughout college, and saying that McFadden's ability is not comparable to Phillips is either disengenous or just misinformed.  The only RB who tested so off the charts as to be in a completely different class than McFadden was Bo Jackson.

I will say this I think the original article was a cheap way of the writer garnering attention and responses from the public, and he was succesful.  I did not see a racial overtone to the piece at all.  He simply gave a perspective of the problem which plagues my community the African American one worse than others.  He did mention golden boys Leinart and Brady in the article.  However I agree if a white writer would have written it, it never would have seen the light of day.

You had two children, with the same woman, and eventually married that woman.  Travis Henry had nine chlidren with nine different women, with no intention of marrying any of them.  IMO, that's worse than Michael Vick killing dogs.  McFadden is already at Henry's pace or worse.  It's very troubling. 

How many times do you see an "inside the life" story of a professional athlete, and their mother has a different last name than them, their siblings have different last names than them, and their father is nowhere to be found?  It's disgusting.  Maybe Dwight Howard, Tom Brady, and Matt Leinhart had one child, with one woman without being married.  They didn't disown the child and refute their fatherhood of the child.  They don't have pathernity suits flying all around them. 

Freeman is 100% right, that this should be the next big issue in professional sports, but so much of it applies to society in general that it probably won't be.  Plus with the way sports is run, people would rather have the disgusting human being with kids in every city he plays road games in and gets arrested every week over the man who can keep a family together and helps the community as long as the former can run for 200 more yards a year.  "It's a business" hardly applies; there are way too many businesses that demand some character and maturity out of their people and don't tolerate animal-like behavior for slightly better output.

The writer of this article clearly has been puffing way too much herb in the past few weeks. What a sorry excuse for a piece of writing. It makes me sick to read such nonsense like this. Give the kid a break for being a stud on and off the field. Arguments like these are ludicrous and have no place for a "legit sports site." Tell him to start a blog with woody paige asap.

I have to agree with that.  I do not have any kids out of wedlock but I could have.  I also did not know a bunch of chicks who wanted my seed like they do DMac.  So I do think he could have took some measures to aviod the situation, lets not judge a man until we walk in his shoes.

Once again, Mike Freeman proves he has no business giving his opinion.  In a sports column or on a street corner.

Why having children out of wedlock is a character issue for a professional althete is beyond me.  Drugs, Domestic abuse, team disruptions, yes.  But this?  C'mon. 

Mike needs to get off his high horse and look around.  There are a lot of families with out white picket fences or two parents.  I'm not about to perform character assasination on McFadden for this.