Joe Mixon is never going to be able to do, or say, enough. He’s never going to be able to articulate the correct words that will allow his reputation and image to be restored to where it was two and a half years ago. Public perception has been formed and we all know that it can be disastrously unchanging. If you were able to listen to Mixon’s press conference on Friday afternoon and not come away just a little more to center on Joe Mixon than you were before then the first three sentences of this paragraph most likely describe you.
Mixon stood along at the podium, without excuse, and faced a curious pool of reporters who had a ton of questions. He apologized to Amelia Molitor, apologized to his team, and offered his gratitude for having been given a second chance.
“It’s never okay to retaliate and hit a woman the way I did,” Mixon said from the podium. “It doesn’t matter what she did, it was all on me, the reason I’m in this position, and I take full responsibility.”
When talking about the university Joe said that he recognized they gave him a second chance, and by all accounts he is taking full advantage of it. He then got emotional when talking about his teammates, “They know what they mean to me,” he said.
Joe Mixon knows that he made a huge mistake. He has paid, and is paying, the price for it. It’s also safe to say that he’s learned from his mistake and, after his meeting with the press, I think you can say that he’s a different person because of it. “Hopefully people around the world can learn from my mistake and I’m willing to teach,” he said.
I’m a person who believes that good things can come from bad situations. If people are educated on the immorality of violence against women, and Joe becomes a better person, as a result of this terrible incident then all is not lost. Owning up to his mistake and facing the music, so to speak, means that’s exactly what could be happening here.
“At the end of the day, I’m just here to basically to ask people for a second chance,” Mixon said as he was winding down his 25-minute session with the press. It sounded like a plea from a young man who desperately just wants to move on from a terrible incident. I kinda feel like that’s something that we all need to do at this point.