On the larger topic of second chances, most of the chatter over the last week has focused in one way or another on Daniel Hood, the Tennessee recruit who, you've probably heard, was signed despite a juvenile rape conviction. You've probably assessed his supporters and detractors and made up your mind about this decision already.

The Oklahoman's Berry Tramel has nothing to say in his column today about Hood directly, though he does offer an interesting test for second chances in the course of fretting over Oklahoma signee Justin Chaisson (right), who is likely to join the Sooners this fall after having four felony charges related to an attack on his girlfriend reduced to misdemeanors. You might remember Tramel for last summer's tone-deaf diatribe against then-OU signee Josh Jarboe, a high school gun offender who -- thanks largely to the pressure finger-waggers like Tramel heaped on coach Bob Stoops -- was booted from the team for recording this harmless rap clip. If so, you might be surprised to read Tramel describe Jarboe today as "less of a risk than is Chaisson," because the former's transgressions were the product of environment: "Jarboe [didn't know] enough to keep a gun away from campus" or not to incorporate completely hypothetical violence into his musical stylings. Ex-Oklahoma State receiver Adarius Bowman, who matriculated to Stillwater after being tossed from North Carolina, "couldn’t seem to stay away from the weed when he was anywhere near home in Tennessee." Bad environments, you see. But with the right environment, why, these delinquent boys might become actual citizens.

This one, though, Chaisson, he sounds like just another brute: (emphasis added)

But Chaisson’s problems can’t be fixed with a change in address. Anger management is not a product of environment.

Whatever causes a guy to kidnap an ex-girlfriend, drive to the desert and put a screwdriver to her neck isn’t rectified by [Oklahoma athletic director] Jerry Schmidt’s early-morning runs.

That’s not delinquent behavior. That’s sociopath behavior, and that moves out of even Father Flanagan’s domain, much less a football coach’s. Take Chaisson to sack quarterbacks, fine. But don’t take him thinking you’re going to fix him.

My liberal arts degree requires that I point out Tramel's inherent paternalism (Jarboe and Bowman are black, and therefore can still be redeemed by the ivory tower father figure, whereas Chaisson is corrupted even as a member of the upstanding white establishment, and therefore must be beyond salvation), but I'm more intrigued by that last line. So it's alright now to take an eligible player for purely football-related motives, despite the possible legal and/or social risks? How novel.

Chaisson's pending admission to Oklahoma -- he's passed every academic and legal hurdle, if Stoops and the school actually welcome him back -- rubs me wrong in all the ways that Hood's do not. Chaisson's crime against a teenage girl wasn't committed by a 13-year-old under the influence of an older accomplice; Chaisson was 18, apparently acting alone and had already accepted the scholarship to OU. He hasn't done anything to redeem himself; where Hood's victim actually wrote to Tennessee on his behalf, Chaisson must legally stay a certain distance from his ex-girlfriend and another witness. Everyone around him is vouching for Hood; Chaisson's best friend in the press is the judge who reduced his felony charges.

But Chaisson's case is not making (and won't make) nearly the waves that Hood's has, because whatever the shorthand is for "punching your girlfriend in the ribs, threatening her with a screwdriver against her throat and throwing her into a car against her will" doesn't assault the mind the way "rapist" does. Certainly the Orlando Sentinel won't openly call Bob Stoops a "dunce" or an "idiot" for considering Chaisson's return, nor will any other paper. Maybe not even a blog (I haven't seen any). I won't, either -- I'd probably welcome Chaisson back, too, if he didn't seem too defiant about it, because I'm just kind of a nihilist like that in that I expect coaches above the high school level, at their salaries, to care at least as much about championships as about character. (This seems to be Tramel's final position, as well.) I don't do moral outrage unless I'm really, really outraged, or on a jury.

But I would like some consistency that doesn't rely on a faux-sociological background check. Josh Jarboe gets kicked off the team, and we're cool with that, and Daniel Hood joins the team, and we can't decide how we feel about that, and Justin Chaisson might join the team, and nobody really cares either way. Who is directing this moralist mob-think, anyway?