AMERICA AT LARGE: THIS MONTH'S suspension, reinstatement and subsequent vilification of Browns tight end Kellen Winslow Jr would seem at first blush to be the latest instance of another self-absorbed athlete gone awry.

Even as the player and the football team reached an uneasy truce this week, one Cleveland columnist suggested the team should cut its losses by sending the talented player packing.

Would that it were so simple. L'Affaire Winslow, which has enjoyed a month's dual run in the sports pages and in the blogosphere, raises several larger questions, among them the delicate balancing act between the NFL's policy of publicly detailing injuries and the traditional, patient-confidentiality ethics of the medical profession, not to mention the responsibility of the mainstream press in the face of internet rumours run amok.

Like Clayton Claw Cleaver Clementine, the protagonist of JP Donleavy's The Onion Eaters, Winslow is the progeny of a distinguished forebear. The former was descended, so to speak, from the spectacularly endowed Clementine of the Three Glands, while Winslow Jr is the son of Kellen Winslow, the great San Diego Chargers' tight end who virtually redefined the position in the 1980s and whose bust reposes in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

Like his father, Winslow fils was a first-round draft choice out of college in 2004. Now in his fifth year with the Cleveland Browns, he stands 6ft 4in, weighs 250lb and can, at least when he's healthy, run like a deer.

Between 2006 and 2007, in which he remained injury-free, he caught 171 passes for nearly 2,000 yards and eight touchdowns, but the balance of his career has otherwise been a disappointment.

He broke a leg two games into his rookie season and was lost for the year. The following spring, Winslow suffered severe injuries, including a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee, when he was thrown from a sport motorcycle he was riding in apparent violation of his contract, and missed the entire season. And in what has thus far been a contentious 2008, Winslow has been on the field for only one game since September, having first been hospitalised with a mysterious ailment and then suspended after he criticised Browns' management for its handling of his medical issues.

The Browns, expected to make the play-offs after a 10-6 record in 2007, have struggled to a disappointing 3-4 this year. Ironically, two of the wins came in games which Winslow missed.

Primarily to ensure gamblers are not privy to inside information, the NFL requires teams to submit a daily "Injury Report" ahead of each game. The information is supposed to include not only the specific nature of the injury (ie, "knee", "concussion"), but a prognosis for the patient's participation in the contest, which can range from "probable" to "questionable" to "doubtful" to "out". In the case of non-football injuries, the teams are allowed a bit of leeway.

Prior to the Browns' October 14th, Monday night game against the Giants, Winslow was listed as "questionable". The specific status of the injury was listed as, simply, "illness", which did little to quell reports already rampant in cyberspace that Winslow was being treated for a condition in which his testicles had swollen to "the size of a pair of grapefruits".

Citing confirmation from an unnamed "NFL source", speculation on the gruesome condition appeared not only on internet gambling and fan sites, but on several respected and quasi-official ones. By yesterday morning, Googling Winslow's name with "testicles" produced 7,170 results. There is even a MySpace page devoted to the subject.

That the online discussion often included speculation that the condition might be the result of a sexually transmitted malady proved extremely embarrassing to the player, not to mention to Mrs Winslow.

The Browns might have cleared all this up weeks ago had they been more forthcoming, but, as it turns out, they had their reasons for cloaking Winslow's condition in a secrecy.

It seems that over the past three years the Cleveland organisation has experienced an unexplained rash of staph infections. At least half a dozen players - including, apparently, Winslow - have been treated for a particularly virulent, and antibiotic-resistant form of Staphylococcus aureus.

This, obviously, is the sort of thing you'd rather not become widespread public knowledge. Potential free-agents might be understandably loath to sign with a team whose locker-room might be a breeding ground for pestilence.

This might explain the Browns' reasons for being deliberately vague in their description of Winslow's "injury", but it did little to ease his personal discomfort at having his scrotum turned into the focal point of nationwide speculation. Moreover, as far as we can tell, not a single newspaper in the country directly addressed the unchecked rumour. (How, exactly, was a reporter supposed to confirm or deny it, short of emulating several envious characters in The Onion Eaterswho routinely ask Clementine if they might have a peek for themselves?)

Winslow returned to action against the Washington Redskins two weeks ago and caught two passes in a 14-11 loss. Afterwards he vented to a reporter, revealing not only the nature of the staph infection, but that the team had asked him to participate in the cover-up. The Browns, he said, "treated him like a piece of meat".

General manager Phil Savage responded with a communique in which he charged that Winslow's "statements brought unjustified negative attention to our organisation, and violated the team-first concept of our football team". Winslow, he announced, would be suspended for last Sunday's game in Jacksonville. In addition to missing his one-game check of $235,294, he would be barred from practice and meetings at the team's facility.

Possibly because Winslow had - prudently, it turned out - preserved text messages from a member of the Browns' media relations staff ordering him not to discuss the staph infection, the suspension was lifted late on Saturday night.

Winslow wasn't in uniform in Jacksonville the following afternoon, but he did get his paycheque.

And as part of what was apparently a brokered settlement, at a scheduled Monday press conference the team confirmed the essential truth of what Winslow had charged.

"Once and for all, Kellen's illness was determined to be a staph infection," said Savage, who obliquely addressed the "grapefruits" story only in volunteering the information that "there was no secondary illness".

For his part, Winslow said he was "just trying to do what is right" by speaking out on what he termed "a health concern".

"That's it, end of story," Savage told reporters Monday. "There was no secondary illness. Staph infection. Everybody's got it, right?"

Well, not quite everybody. The MySpace page called "Kellen Winslow Jr's Testicles" is still drawing thousands of hits a day. Click on it this morning and the first thing you'll hear is a heavy-metal song called Big Balls.