Dopey WRs Harvin, Tate Deserve to See Their Draft Status Go Up In Smoke

This isn't about your stance on the legality of marijuana, or how many football players or college students smoke the stuff on a regular basis. Those arguments only cloud the issue. This is about people doing stupid things and getting punished for it. In the cases of Percy Harvin and Brandon Tate, the two receivers who reportedly tested positive for marijuana at the NFL scouting combine, the issue couldn't be more simple.

These two guys will not be drafted as high as their abilities and resumes say they should. In the case of Harvin, he's gone from a first-half-of-the-first-round pick to a guy who might slip all the way into the second round and beyond. Tate could have been a second- or third-round pick but is now likely to slip further.

And that is 100 percent fair. For a couple of reasons.

The first reason is more or less clerical. A player who tests positive for a banned drug during the combine is automatically entered into the NFL's drug program and is deemed to have committed a first offense. That player can be tested as often as the league wants to test him, and if he tested positive again this year, would be deemed to have committed a second offense and suspended for four games. This is a risk. Any team thinking about drafting a player they feel can help them in 2009 is within its rights to pass if he's one strike away from missing a quarter of the season.

But the second reason these guys deserve to suffer for this is more important in the long term. Assuming the FOXSports.com report is true (and there's no reason to doubt it), this has moved beyond the speculation stage. The NFL's teams have received the list of players who tested positive for drugs at the combine, and if Harvin and Tate are on it, then they've given all 32 teams reason to believe they're idiots.

Every player who goes to the combine knows he's going to be tested. If you can't lay off the weed long enough to make sure you come up clean in a test you absolutely know is coming and is going to have bearing on your future employment and income, then you're either a habitual drug user or a stone-cold moron. And if you're either, then your prospective employer, be it an NFL team, a Fortune 500 company or a gas station, has reason to wonder if you're somebody they want to hire.

If they can help it, teams don't like drafting morons. This is why they have the Wonderlic test, why they conduct so many personal interviews, and yes, why they test for drugs at the scouting combine. It's all part of a weeding-out process, designed to expose as many flaws as possible in top-level athletes who also happen to be 20-year-old kids so the teams drafting them can reduce the risk to levels as acceptable as possible.

And so, Percy Harvin slides down the draft board. And if your team needs a receiver and has a late first-round or early second-round pick, you may be excited. Because Harvin was a great college receiver and has the skills to be great in the NFL. He's the rare receiver who might actually be able to help your team right away, since he's such an accomplished special teams player as well. "Good," you say. "The NFL is silly for testing for pot anyway. Now maybe my team can get a steal."

And that may well happen. Somebody may pick Harvin later than he was supposed to go, and he may turn out to be a brilliant player and a completely solid citizen. Might never do anything this stupid again.

But as of right now, the fact appears to be that Harvin has cost himself money. Teams needing receivers at those spots could well look at somebody like Mohamed Massaquoi or Brian Robiskie -- players who aren't as good as Harvin but are now perceived to carry less risk. And Harvin did that to himself.

He knew they were testing -- knew that a positive test would cost him money -- and he apparently smoked anyway. That's stupid. And if he has to suffer consequences for that stupidity, then good. That's the way it works for the rest of us. That's the way it should work for these guys too.