Sebastian Janikowski makes us feel old.
Well, worse than that. He makes us feel old, and cranky, and judgmental. He makes us feel like the parents we swore we'd never be.
Mostly, he makes us feel like the parents we probably needed once or twice, or in some cases 53 times.
It seems that Jano, the happy-go-lucky doorknob-headed Oakland Raiders kicker, has managed to acquaint himself with two of the few members of the Florida State University police force he hadn't already met. He is accused (and given the conclusion-jumping that occurred after the Ray Lewis arrest in January) of possessing GHB, the "date-rape" drug in a night spot near the university. It is his fifth brush with the law so far, an impressive figure by any standard.
Now in the old days, were this to happen to us, our fathers, unschooled in the Cleaverly arts, would have invited us back to the house for a heart-to-heart chat and quick cuffing with the family encyclopedia. The word "stupid" would be mentioned often, as well as the phrase, "You'll be living under the porch until we say otherwise."
This is not considered optimal parenting.
On the other hand, the Bowdenly arts, which run along the lines of, "You kick good, son, so we'll take care of the cops" are as vociferously dismissed by parenting experts, both on network and cable shows across the nation.
Thus, it seems to us that there is a middle ground to be advanced toward the confused young Pole with the titanium leg and the ... well, er, uhh, titanium head.
Perhaps this might help.
"Son, you have two choices here. The first is to move to California, room with one of the many Raiders who doesn't have a rap sheet, listen to him when he tells you not to get arrested, and cash enormous checks. The second is to learn to be happy in jail while married to a man named Dutch. I think the decision here is obvious, don't you?"
Now, if that doesn't sound like the old man, nothing does. And how many times did you listen to the old man when he was trying to be reasonable?
No, we all learned the same way --- face first. Not all of us had the lesson reinforced with fingerprinting, true, but we all had to steer ourselves into some scrape or other to understand how not to do it twice. This is why smart people might get liquored up once and aim Dad's Impala into the lake at 3:30 in the morning, but they don't do it twice.
And they surely don't do it two weeks after getting liquored up and putting Mom's Fairlane into the bus kiosk at 2:45 a.m.
It has been fairly well established that ol' Jano isn't as smart as we'd like our kids to be.
But as we lecture him on the finer points of social interaction (today's lesson: dates like to be conscious), it suddenly occurs to us that we have become our fathers, with the same gifts for communication through hectoring, finger-pointing and lecturing that they had when we did something legally actionable.
Damn. And we thought we were the first generation to be wire-to-wire cool.
We need to embrace this now with our children, just as the Raiders surely will embrace this approach with Ol' Jano. The lectures he hears from Bruce Allen, Jon Gruden, and maybe even Big Al himself will not be fatherly the ways ours would be. They'll be more matter-of-fact, along the lines of:
"Sit down, stupid, and hand me that encyclopedia for later. First, though, let us explain how this works. About your contract --- it isn't going to be for as much as you thought, because we're not paying you to kick for the prison football team with Burt Reynolds, dig?
"Second, we might be the Raiders, but you're not one yet. You can be as reckless as we let you be once you're here, but you haven't signed anything yet, so don't cop any attitude with us.
"Third, we don't want to find out that the sixth time's the charm. You might have Tallahassee down, but you leave Napa alone.
"And fourth, and we mean this one, you leave your pals at home. You're going to learn how to be a pro, and you're not going to learn it with those boy howdys hanging on your jacket. We have a roommate for you, and he is empowered by the franchise to use this encyclopedia on you at his discretion. In the offseason, you can decide how you want your friends to act around you, but if we see them here, we set the Rottweilers upon them, got it? Now do you have anything to say, and do you honestly think we want to hear you say it?"
It isn't the way Ward Cleaver would handle it, but Ward never held a million-dollar contract over The Beaver's head. It isn't even the way we might do it, but we've already given him the high-powered media lecture and you see how well that took.
But if it works, we might want to call Al for parenting tips. Maybe he'll let us borrow the encyclopedia.
Ray Ratto, a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.