Darren Sharper, Rapist, Going To Prison

Former NFL star, Darren Sharper, is going away for a long, long time. That's what happens when you rape people. The former all-pro safety was sentenced to 18 years in prison by a federal judge Thursday morning for drugging and raping up to 16 different women in four different states.

Prosecutors originally suggested a nine year bid for Sharper, but the honorable Jane Triche Milazzo disagreed. After the 5x pro bowler pled guilty to three counts of distributing drugs with rape as his aim, the judge felt the 18 year sentence, just 15 months shy of the maximum, was a tad more appropriate. I agree with the judge.

Sharper and his loser friends, Brandon Licciardi (who was a sheriffs deputy as painfully ironic as that is), and Erik Nunez would put anti-anxiety pills into these women's drinks in order to make their path to abuse less resistant. This wasn't a spur of the moment screw up, obviously. This was systematic rape with the same formula repeated again and again. Who knows how many more victims out there suffered the same way as these 16 women who were brave enough to come forward.

I mean, talk about a desperate loser. You'd think that being a star in the NFL for over a decade, winning a super bowl, and having enough charisma to be a television analyst for the NFL Network would make make life in the female department pretty easy.

But it just goes to show you: what you do is not who you are. Darren Sharper is a bad guy. All the accolades and adulation can't and never will change his DNA. I hope his appropriate sentencing brings a sliver of closure to his victims. I also hope that the shame forevermore attached to his once sterling name hits home harder than the closing of his cell door on his first night in the clink.