The new NFL policy regarding domestic violence represents a muddled and confused message. Suddenly, we are looking to the National Football League to be the "standard bearers" and the "last beacon of hope" for a culture adept at both avoiding and scapegoating most issues. Rather than the priest, doctors, lawyers, judges, congressmen and women, fireman, policeman, teachers, CEO's, and insurance salespeople one might expect to lead the charge on an issue as important as domestic violence, the NFL has thrust itself into the breach. Yes, we have turned to the young men of the National Football League and asked of them, not what the law requires, but an even higher standard. From this day forward, when drafted into the NFL, a player will be subject to more strict rules than any other profession in our society. Let me see....yep, that sounds right. The ability to risk your body on the football field surely provides a foundation and training to become the most ethical and moral of all U.S. citizens.
I, personally, have no problem with tougher laws designed to protect women (or really anyone) from the growing violence in our society. If we, as a society, decide to make our laws more strict, I am all for it. But, if we start looking to create tougher rules for specific groups of people, I hate to be the one to break the news, but we (as a country) have a terrible track record in this area. What's more, with Wikipedia and the internet readily accessible from every Ipad and smart phone, it is not difficult to find the evidence of just how bad we (the United States) have been in this area. Please fire up the closest browser and search "domestic violence". After a few minutes of reading, the conclusions there are crystal clear: 1) women in our society are far too often the targets of violence at the hands of their partners, 2) this is not a recent trend, and 3) it is not isolated, by any means, to the National Football League. Domestic violence seems to be the by-product of a culture, hell bent on using violence to solve every problem.
While it can be debated whether there is a connection between the violence in football and a higher propensity toward violence in general, ONE (Roger Goodell) might need to examine the existing levels of violence in society, as a whole, prior to making that leap. Then, if ONE were so inclined, ONE might look into other sports (hockey, boxing, auto racing, baseball, etc.) to determine if ONE's hypothesis was rooted in reality, bigotry, or hypocrisy. While an exclusive club, and some would argue that is what the NFL has become, can certainly make rules to determine who can and who cannot belong. It would seem arbitrary, at best, to expel a member of the club for actions taken before a newly pondered, but clearly decisive ruling regarding domestic violence existed. There are a whole series of laws regarding "double jeopardy" written to prevent second and third bites at the same apple. Lest we conveniently forget, those laws protect us all, and often from our more influential neighbors.
No, I am not oblivious to the fact that we, as a society, sometimes have a mob mentality (some might even say "lynch mob"). However, we often find ourselves hiding behind some sense that we didn't realize the disparities in treatment between the differing groups which often result (see also: disparities in sentencing for drug offenses). However, since we now have the benefit of literally billions of pieces of information constantly at our fingertips, it is only through sheer laziness that we are able to blindly follow the mob. That means that neither Roger Goodell, nor any "would-be-leader" of an organization can simply flip a coin and decide that some minority group (yes, that is a double-entendre' for the fact that the NFL is a very small group and also heavily weighted in the brown pigmentation) should have a different set of rules from the rest of society. Said another way, it is always a good idea to pursue "justice" in the face of a mob. The larger and more vocal the group, the more important it becomes not to waiver on principle in the decision making process. As the NFL will surely learn, AGAIN, the problem with vigilante justice is that it eventually gets around to us all and we are never as passive when it is our turn in the hot seat. The one strike rule is only easily acceptable when you are not the person whose career is at risk.
Yes, I know that it is difficult to wait for our slow justice system to work through all the idiosyncrasies in these situations. I am certain that none of us (non-NFL members), would ever want it to be considered that we were law abiding citizens right up to the point that we went "ultra-stupid". No, we would never want the court to adjudicate our fate, taking into account the totality of our actions, our history, or any demonstrable "goodness" we might ever have possessed. After all, we are a nation of laws and we do better when we resist any temptation to suspend those laws because it seems more expedient in a given situation. That type of rationality and consideration of fairness is surely reserved for those of us who are fortunate enough to kill others (accidentally) at the dirt track. How ironic, the public sentiment seems to have been that missing two races was far too harsh a punishment for Tony Stewart, rather than the other way around.
All across the sports world today, no one is asking about "fairness" and no one is asking about "justice". Why? Because domestic violence is ugly stuff! Whether seen through a video, a photograph, or through the eyes of the countless children who grow up as witnesses to it. Domestic violence is so bad that it cannot be defended, regardless of the circumstances. Whether a single occurrence or a weekly routine, after a night out drinking with the boys, domestic violence is unacceptable. Meanwhile, all across this country the calls will continue to pour in, by the hundreds, to police departments from small town to big city. Week after week, month after month, and year after year; policeman return to the same homes, to see the same people, until someone is either dead or missing. AND....for anyone who cares, it happens in cities and towns without NFL franchises too.
"True Leaders" often find great opportunities to teach in the face of great upheaval. Those leaders use the high levels of emotion and tension to impart lessons that are remembered long after the leaders themselves are forgotten. Yes, it is much easier to discard the individual nuisance and get back to more important things, like building new stadiums with mammoth-sized, flat screens and over-priced, personal-pan pizzas. However, when a Google search for "domestic violence" in 2020 reveals the same results that it did in 2014, or worse results, what that will point out is not the stupidity of Ray Rice's decision in that elevator. Any 5 year old could see his actions were dumb! No, what the lack of any noticeable change, over that period will make crystal clear for us all is that billionaires and millionaires make dollars, but often have no idea how to make sense. That task, my friends, falls to us. We can decide to politicize this issue and make it all about the NFL players of our world, giving them especially harsh treatment because it makes us feel better or we can choose instead to muster all the resources focused on this issue and use them for the good of a country, in which domestic violence has been allowed to thrive. In the same way that Tony Stewart will find ways to make something positive out of his mess, given that chance. Good people, who do dumb things, often work very hard to redeem themselves and in the process, they often benefit us all.
I, as a man of forty-seven, have never hit a woman and I cannot imagine a scenario where I would. Yet, my teenage sons, who have never witnessed domestic violence at home, sat through a painful (for them) discussion of the domestic violence issue at our dinner table this week. Why? Because NFL players account for a very small fraction of the domestic violence cases in our country. It is our culture that produced those players, not the other way around. Lest we lose sight of the real problem here, our children are marinating in the very same culture that gives us domestic violence every 9 seconds. Let that soak in: EVERY NINE SECONDS. It does not begin, nor end, with the less than 2500 men playing football in the NFL. Yes, those men are easy targets and we can pick them off one by one, but we are a nation of 300 million people.
Dear Roger, there was an opportunity here to do something of substance, I am sure of it! Please look around at the countless examples of young men, who have made big mistakes early in their careers and gone on to become good (some would even say great) people: Ray Lewis, Chris Carter, Michael Irving, Randy Moss, and the list could be as long as this page. I wonder how many of them would have survived under your regime? Dear Congress, do not look at this low point for the NFL as your opportunity to deflect blame. Your organization, is one of a very few, with a record that can make the NFL players look like choir boys. Yours is also an organization much more responsible for the tone and texture of our culture than the NFL.
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