Sad but true

Upon hearing of the death of Bengals wide receiver Chris Henry, one can't help but feel for his teammates, friends and family. But it's also hard to fathom how his death is not, in large part, his own fault.

This was a talented player who couldn't seem to stay on the field, most recently because of injury, but more often than not because he found himself in some kind of trouble, on or off the field. A couple years ago, when much was made of the Bengals piling up arrests, many of those arrests were Henry's. The Bengals released the sixth-year receiver out of West Virginia in 2007 after his fifth arrest. He eventually was brought back to Cincinnati, and had been on relatively good behavior ... until Wednesday.

In the coming weeks, more and more facts will come to light about how Henry was thrown from the back of his fiancee's pickup truck after what police are calling a domestic dispute. But regardless of what we learn, nothing changes the end result of this incident.

Perhaps other athletes can learn from this and avoid the pitfalls that continually found Henry. It's unfortunate, to say the least, that Henry was unable to figure out his life before he lost it.