We all know the Constitution of our country gives us the right to a freedom of speech, however I think it's fair to say a whole new list of amendments needs to be written up for our beloved sports world.

Athletes and TV personalities don't exactly get the whole "freedom of speech" right, specifically on social networks.

I write this as I listen to the His and Hers podcast from this past Monday and both Michael Smith and Jemele Hill have made statements, whether in a column or on twitter that could have been career threatening if not handled with the proper PR actions. Personally, I don't believe either action was extremely offensive, at the same time, the hardest thing to remember as a journalist is that if its offensive to one person, it's offensive.

When the Trayvon Martin verdict came down earlier this summer, many athletes and other celebrities took to twitter to express the opinion on the situation. While it seems as if the opinions of many actors, actresses, and others in that field, went unaddressed, almost every athlete who tweeted after the verdict became a topic of discussion in the following 24-48 hours.

I've always thought twitter was a platform that athletes could use to connect to the public and their fans, so when they express an opinion on an issue that is far beyond sports, why are they attacked?

I completely understand the whole concept of being a role model and watching what you say in the public eye.

In fact, even in my position, being weeks away from 21, still a college student, and keeping up with this blog that I hope blows up one day, I have told myself of numerous occasions that its time for me to stop cursing on my social networking sites. I'm nowhere near where I want to be in this field but I do understand that if someone were to look at my tweets from the past 24 hours alone, I'd probably lose endless opportunities. I have thought about opening a whole new account as my "professional" twitter to promote, but I think that'd be a cop out personally. I simply need to discipline myself and censor myself because when I finally do make it, I've seen to many careers in my field ended by clicking send one too many times.

I totally digressed from the route I wanted to take in this post, but I hope the point I was trying to make got across.

I started this post of with bringing up freedom of speech. While not getting too political, I think it's fair to say athletes and alot of many others in the journalism world don't get to fully live out that freedom, especially in the public eye.

We're exactly 2 weeks away from NFL Kickoff weekend, which means we have 2 more weeks of preseason to go through. Now I know it's been debated every year, but this is the first year I have this platform to express my opinion on so here it goes.

For 2 weeks, it's purposeful, the other 2 weeks are pointless (title. opinion. clever huh?). Now when that Hall of Fame game came on, every football fan around the country was ecstatic simply because we had our football back. Regardless of the teams, the location, or the meaningfulness of the game; we were watching because since February it was the first thing available to satisfy our fix.

Most of us sat and watched week 2 of preseason as well. Some for the same reasons as week 1, but also because now it's time to start evaluating our team on the field and set realistic expectations for the season.

However tonight was the beginning of preseason week 3 and as much as I love any type of football, I'm exhausted of the meaningless football. I'm ready for the stats to start sticking. I'm ready for the records to be worth something, and quite honestly, I'm ready for fantasy season. These next 2 weeks of preseason are pointless to me in many different ways.

Let us first begin with injuries. While some have the belief that if you're going to get hurt, it's just going to happen, I'm under the impression that more can be done to prevent it. We're still 2 weeks away from the season and the record for number of ACL's torn during training camp and games have already been shattered, let alone the number of other season ending injuries that have occurred. I fully understand that injures are part of the game, but why must players be subjected to more high risk, low reward situations if there really is no reward to preseason?

But who am I? I'm just a guy aspiring to be a journalist and broadcaster. I don't know that the coaches and players need to last 2 weeks to fight for and evaluate their jobs. Some players and coaches would say these last 2 weeks are the most important 2 weeks. My rebuttal would then be, what have you really been doing since camp opened up in mid-late July? By now you should know if a player has it or doesn't have what it takes to make your team.

In my proposal for the new schedule, I'm removing these last 2 weeks of preseason, beginning the regular season next weekend (the last week of August and same weekend that college football kicks off), and opening training camps the week of July 15th. Teams may even add up to as many as 3 scrimmages to their schedule if they so choose.

This still provides 2 games to knock off the rust, a month of training camp to practice and really get into the flow of schemes, and less pointless injury opportunities.

I understand its not that simple, but that's why I love this blog, who said anything had to be simple?

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