Play football, stay out of jail

A judge in Ohio has decided two teenagers who pulled a prank that badly injured two other teens can wait until after their high school football team completes its season before they have to spend any time in a juvenile detention center.

Really.

"I shouldn't be doing this, but I'm going to. I see positive things about participating in football," Gary McKinley, a retired judge from Union County, told Dailyn Campbell, 16, a junior quarterback at Kenton High School in saying Kimball and Jesse Howard, 17, could wait until after football season to serve their time. Each was sentenced to 60 days.

Back last November, several teens stole a decoy deer and set it up in a road so they could watch drivers swerve around it. Robert Roy Jr., who was 18 at the time, saw the decoy, swerved and crashed his car into a pole and a fence. His neck, collarbone, arm and leg were broken. He's had 10 surgeries and will have at least one more. His passenger, Dustin Zachariah, 17, has brain damage. He's in his teens, but his family says he now has the cognitive ability of a sixth-grader.

Kids do stupid things. Both Campbell and Howard are sorry for what they have done. But they must pay the price. McKinley's sentence shows that the price they must pay is not as important as Kenton's High School football season.

And we wonder why Maurice Clarett turned out the way he did.

Oh, Howard and Campbell must each write a 500-word essay on "Why I must think before I act."

Charges against other teens in the case are pending. Let's hope a different judge hears them.