This week I would like to formally announce that, I too, may be Anna Nicole Smith’s baby’s daddy. The odds are against me, I know. To my knowledge I’ve never even met the former Playboy Playmate, however, I do tend to drink too much from time to time, frequently blacking out when doing so and waking up in the late afternoon with absolutely no recollection of my shameful antics from the previous night. Usually, the only signs of my indiscretions are headaches, molding vomit on my floor, a trail of broken objects and occasionally a homemade porno, if I’m lucky.

In the past, when in this mind-set, I’ve been known to drink bong water, slap hookers, kick puppies, assault homeless people, urinate in random places and commit many other random acts of socially deviant behavior, or so I’m told. But these types of things happen to the best of us. That’s why I can empathize with people such as Tennessee Titans cornerback Adam “Pac-Man” Jones and the Cincinnati Bengals football team, who, no doubt, were most likely completely inebriated when each of their respective transgressions occurred.

Monday, Jones was questioned following a triple shooting at a Las Vegas strip club, where he was reportedly throwing $81,020 worth of dollar bills at 40 different strippers, which was “intended as a visual effect.” The promoter, who provided the strippers, apparently felt this was unfair and took the money, leading to a fight that ended with three people wounded by gunfire and one injured after being hit over the head with a champaign bottle.

Nothing more than a casual Tuesday for myself. Besides, Pac-Man deserves a seventh chance when his extenuating circumstances are taken into account. Forget that he’s now had seven run-ins with the law since being drafted in 2005, and that all those incidents occurred in nightclubs.

The man had been in Vegas for NBA All-Star Weekend, indulging in what may be God’s two most beautiful inventions, besides unicorns and lesbians: legalized gambling and prostitution. Seventy-two straight hours of hookers, blackjack and everything else Vegas has to offer must take its toll on a man, both mentally and physically. Who hasn’t gotten into a shoot-out about $80,000 spent in a strip-club on a Monday afternoon after that kind of weekend? We should just be thankful that this incident was the worst to come out of an All-Star Weekend in Vegas. I was expecting dozens of divorces, fights, shootings and arrests.

In the wake of this and an entire season that has been tarnished by misbehavior off the field, including Denver Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams, the arrest of nine members of the Cincinnati Bengals in a year and most recently an incident at a Las Vegas club involving Jones, the NFL players union is attempting to take a stand, even suggesting implementing a new “three strikes, you’re out” conduct policy.

The suggestion came from a four-hour meeting of the league conduct advisory committee, held in Indianapolis, the site of the NFL Scouting Combine.

The players believe when it comes to the personal conduct area, you can’t be in the wrong place at the wrong time three or four times in a row, NFLPA executive director Gene Upshaw said, according to the report of the meeting. “There comes a time when maybe you need to look at saying, ‘OK, that’s enough, you did it three times, you should be out.’ You have to look at each circumstance, but they’re saying there has to be some penalties for your actions.”

This is completely untrue. Somehow, every weekend I end up at the wrong place at exactly the wrong time. I just don’t remember most of it, such as fathering Anna Nicole Smith’s baby.

Dustin Ensinger is a senior in journalism and political science and can be reached for comment at [email protected].