In the weeks preceding the NFL draft, we heard rumors involving former NBA star Karl Malone, a son who would be entering the NFL, and a timeline suggesting that the child’s mother might have been a child herself at the time of conception.

But since we continue to place not getting sued slightly above informing the readership on the list of PFT priorities, we left it alone.

Now, however, the stories are gurgling to the surface regarding Bills rookie tackle Demetrius Bell.  Writes Allen Wilson of the Buffalo News:  “His mother, Gloria Bell, reportedly was only 13 years old and Malone a college sophomore at Louisiana Tech when Demetrius was born.  Malone might have served jail time had her family asked the district attorney to file criminal charges.”

Malone had no involvement in the rearing of the child.  They first met when Demetrius Bell was 18, and Malone reportedly said to him that it was too late to be his father, and that Bell would have to “earn his money on his own.”

Though we’re not quite sure why the decision of the family to not press charges kept Malone from spending what would have been his early years with the Utah Jazz doing the Jailhouse Rock, it appears that the man who wanted no involvement in the life of his son could have had a life that turned out extremely differently if the age-of-consent laws that routinely get applied to so many others had been applied to him.