Hard to believe that it has already been a year since his tragic and untimely passing.

I don’t like it when people call the Hancock death tragic—it’s not. Unfortunate, yes, but not tragic. I speak here concerning the circumstances that led to his untimely passing a year ago. While I feel for the family members and everyone who knew Josh, it’s tough for me to call it a tragedy, because someone who puts themselves in the situation that he did knows that they are putting themselves in the crosshairs. He made a poor choice and, unfortunately, he paid for it with his life.

Darryl Kile’s passing was tragedy. The passing of Hank Gathers was a tragedy. Korey Stringer’s death was a tragedy. Unexpected deaths like those shatter the imagination because these are highly trained and conditioned athletes, we don’t expect them pass away in the prime of their lives.

I believe it’s disrespectful to the families of these men to call it tragic when someone makes a poor decision and puts themselves in harms way as Josh Hancock did. I am glad each and every day that he did not kill anyone else in this accident, because their deaths would be considered tragic—life ended when someone else made a poor decision.

I think the important moral lesson to draw from this unfortunate event is to educate our young people that these types of things can occur and to remember incidents like this any time they are faced with a similar situation.

(Postscript: I have nothing against the use of alcohol or recreational drugs. I believe where we fail as a society is that we make every effort to keep people from using these drugs but don’t talk enough about the consequences of dangerous use or of their effects on decision making for those who do use them. I believe that this starts with proper parenting and proper parental discipline, something I believe is slipping away from us as a society. I’m not saying anything negative about Josh’s parents, a grown man makes his own decisions, I’m simply saying the the most positive impact that this incident could make is to use it as an example of what can happen to anyone who puts themselves in a risky or dangerous situation. My aim is not to offend, only to correct what I believe is a mistake in defining the incident)