Luis Suarez ... love him or hate him

"Imagine the tabloid fodder of Lindsay Lohan's life with Jennifer Lawrence's acting chops."

-- Wright Thompson, "Portrait of a serial winner"

Wright Thompson's wonderful piece for ESPN about Luis Suarez, from which the line above was taken, is actually one of three excellent sports stories I read today, the others being Alyson Footer's about the integration of Houston and the role the Astrodome played in it and Will Leitch's on ESPN's soccer coverage, which in its explanation of how both ESPN and NBC Sports Network cover soccer presents a guide that all sports television executives should heed.

I don't think I can both quickly and properly sum up Thompson's Suarez story, particularly without spoilers, so I'll suffice by saying that he builds around the search for details on an incident that may or may not have happened in Suarez's youth into an attempt to explain what makes him who he is, good and bad.

Seriously, read it, along with Footer and Leitch. You can thank me later.

But even before I read the piece, I've been thinking about how Suarez, as few others I can think of in sports, with the possible exceptions of Ray Lewis or Michael Vick, embodies the guiding principle of this blog ... that we are all hypocrites, that we are willing to forgive (or at least understand) people we like while condemning in those we don't. It applies in life as well as sports.

If the worst thing you could say about Luis Suarez was that he's a serial diver (another trait he shares with Lawrence ... falling down in public), that would be one thing. It's unsporting as hell, and I think it has given him a reputation as The Striker Who Cried Wolf, but diving isn't exactly committing assault on the pitch.

Except Suarez has done that ... twice. And not fists-or-feet-flying assault, but biting. Along with spitting, is there any nastier thing you can do.

And oh yeah ... he was also suspended for racially abusing Patrice Evra. I'm actually surprised that in the Suarez ledger, the biting, and not this, seems to be the first thing people think of.

I don't know if it's because the soccer world still doesn't get the problem of racism (this is only a clip, but I would recommend the "Real Sports" story about it on HBO if you can catch a replay), the argument in some quarters that "negrito" is not actually a racial slur in South America, because talking too much about it would also force an uncomfortable discussion of how the John Terry-Anton Ferdinand situation was handled or something else, but that's how it seems.

Yet much in the same way Ravens fans cheered for Lewis, Eagles fans cheered for Vick (and Jets fans may now) and Chelsea fans cheer for Terry, Liverpool fans (including myself) cheer for Suarez, even if we know in our heart of hearts that maybe we shouldn't.

Why?

Do you really have to ask?