How anyone can somehow not know they have several parking tickets is a mystery. If I have one parking ticket, I am made well aware of it. And yet Ross Blacklock came to the combine this week apparently blissfully unaware he had 37 parking tickets. THIRTY-SEVEN!!. It took the intrepid research of the Raiders scouting department to let him know.
“I did not know about the parking tickets,” said Blacklock at his press conference. “They take them out our checks. They pay for it at TCU, so I was confused that he said that. I was like ‘Oh, I didn’t know that.’ But I guess that’s a good thing because I ain’t got no bad record. Clean dude.”
Blacklock sees it as a good thing because he figures if the Raiders are being that thorough and digging that deep into this record if there were worse things than parking tickets, the Raiders would have found those too.
It’s pretty clear the Raiders care a bit more about character than most teams. Mike Mayock said recently that what most pleased him about his first draft class was that they were all who the Raiders thought they were when they drafted them. He was speaking mostly of their intangibles like character, work ethic, and leadership qualities.
Having 37 parking tickets is not really a positive. Not knowing you have them isn’t either. But he’s right that it could be worse. It’s up to the Raiders or any other team if they view this as a red flag.
