In light of Vince Young’s immature yet consistent actions at a strip club over the weekend it has become obvious to me that today’s era NFL player needs a strict and clear set of rules.

I can only assume that it is due to the lack of comprehensible guidelines that made Vince Young think it was okay to punch a man in the face for talking negatively about his beloved Texas Longhorns.

While I will leave the rule making to Roger Goodell and the NFL’s front office, I will lay out a simple and understandable set of suggestions that if followed would have saved some former and current NFL players a lot of grief.

Don’t use your bodyguards to seal off a nightclub bathroom so you can have what you claim to be consensual sex. While this is always a bad move it is a particularly bad idea if you have been previously accused of rape.

It’s a bad idea if I do it. It’s just stupid if a Super Bowl winning quarterback does it.

Don’t buy and store an arsenal of automatic and illegal weapons. While I am a believer in the right to bear arms, even I must admit that it may not be in my best interest to stockpile assault rifles in my home after already being charged for illegal gun possession and assault on a police officer outside of a nightclub.

On a side note, being 6’-3”and over 300 pounds doesn’t make you inconspicuous. It makes you easy to identify.

In case you haven’t noticed a trend, nightclubs and bars may be venues you want you want to avoid as an NFL player.

Apparently the only thing worse than going to a bar is owning one. Okay, maybe owning a bar isn’t all that bad, however, co-owning a bar with the mafia is never good for one’s squeaky clean image.

Admitting later to gambling on NFL games will further damage your reputation. Remember…going into business with the mafia = bad idea.

Don’t go to strip clubs. If you do go, however, please don’t throw money at women and then grab them by their hair when they try to pick it up. You may find it begins a sequence of events that ends with you biting a bouncer in the leg and eventually the shooting of another bouncer.

Don’t do drugs. This includes steroids, HGH and other performance enhancing drugs. This also includes marijuana and methamphetamines.

Like many of the previously stated suggestions you wouldn’t think I would have to spell this one out, however, getting caught in a bathroom stall coked out of your gourd the night before the Super Bowl is a bad idea.

While using coke is a bad idea, selling it is even worse. Getting caught with large amounts of it in the trunk of your car after having previously been busted for possession is a bad idea. Remember…cocaine = bad.

Don’t fight dogs, dummy. Yes, I know it’s more common than most of normal society knows, but that doesn’t make it right and once you start making a few million dollars a year it is one of the things you and your friends are going to have to stop being associated with.

Assuming they simply didn’t know it was a bad idea, these suggestions may help NFL players avoid any future trouble.

If in fact guys, like Vince Young are less ignorant and more punk and the only thing that will help them is a swift kick in the tail, a suspension and the loss of some all mighty dollars.

David Friedman is a long-time contributor to the Roanoke-Chowan News Herald. A Bertie High School graduate, he and his wife currently reside in Wilmington. David can be reached via e-mail at dave@gate811.net.