Change Our Culture and the NFL Will Follow

Much has been written and talked about in the media regarding the troubling culture of the NFL. The commissioner doesn't take domestic violence seriously; player behavior is out of control; and owners care more about profits than the character of the players. On top of this, a new report indicates one-third of all NFL players will leave the game with some level of brain damage leaving us to question whether or not the game is safe to play at any level.

Still, fans follow the game at a record rate. They participate in fantasy football leagues as well as follow their favorite teams. They bet millions of dollars every weekend on the outcome of games while also purchasing NFL merchandise in a variety of forms. Clearly, Americans love and want the game despite recent polls showing their desire to see improved player conduct and stiffer penalties for law breakers.

Unfortunately, as a society, we are more concerned over the conduct of fewer than two thousand professional football players than we are over society as a whole. I keep hearing people say, “It is a privilege and not a right to play the game.” In reality, it is neither. Being a professional football player is nothing more than a brutal job.

Can you name any other profession that is allowed to thrive while causing one-third of its work force brain damage? Americans should be demanding OSHA step in and shut the game down rather than helping it achieve record annual profits. However, if that were to happen, what would we do on Sunday afternoons or Monday and Thursday evenings?

If you use the “It's not a right, it's a privilege” argument and apply it to all jobs in the United States, we would have to hold ourselves accountable to the same standards as the NFL. How many of us are willing to undergo random drug testing knowing it could cost us our career and reputation? Are we willing to have our work performance posted in newspapers and on web sites while dissected by talking heads on television and radio? Are we comfortable knowing we can be canned from our jobs and not owed a dime despite having a signed contract? Do we want to have to look for a new career because someone tells us at the age of thirty or thirty-five we are over the hill?

If we want the culture of the NFL to change, we must first change the culture of the nation that created it. We also have to stop embracing the violence and win at all cost mentality behind the game.

At least half of our nation has been raised in a time in which we embraced violent video games starting at an early age. What type of adult behavior do we expect to churn out when parents allow their kids to play games centered around making quick and violent decisions in order to advance to a higher level? It should not surprise us that during this video age we have also seen a huge rise in school violence, mass shootings, and domestic violence.

When we promote the sale and use of alcohol and link it to the enjoyment of our football viewing experience, it only makes sense we see a rise in domestic violence calls on Sundays in cities where the home team loses. It is also why we see an increase in DUIs as drunken fans try to drive home, sometimes with tragic results.

As a culture, perhaps we would be better served if we corrected and eliminated the behavior of local gangs, drug dealers, and other violent criminals so our Sundays can once again be spent enjoying life outdoors rather than living vicariously through professional football players. Maybe if we eliminated, rather than celebrated, reality TV shows that glorify drinking, degradation, loud confrontations, and narcissistic behavior, we might see an improvement in not just football player behavior, but also the behavior of fans and society in general.

If we are going to see significant change in player behavior in the NFL it will require us to demand better from ourselves. It will mean confronting problems on a national level and not just a National Football League level. It will also require us to be better doctors, teachers, trash collectors, and most of all, citizens.

If playing in the NFL is a privilege then so should being a citizen of this nation. Our best leaders lead by example and not by the, “Do as I say and not as I do,” philosophy too many of us live by. We all need a wake up call when it comes to individual conduct before placing higher expectations on the NFL. By demanding more from ourselves, we all lead by example and that will, in time, show in how the NFL commissioner, its players, and owners conduct themselves.

NFL: No Fan League

NFL owners are often accused of running a good old boys club with its commissioner, Roger Goodell, their hand picked mouth piece. Under Goodell's reign, NFL owners enjoy record profits annually and they in turn rewarded Goodell to the tune of $44 million dollars last year. Despite continued high profile police cases involving players arrested for domestic violence, child abuse, DUI, assault, rape, and drug dealing, the league continues to grow in popularity making Roger Goodell, Roger Good Sell.

However, with his recent botched handling of the Ray Rice domestic violence case and the outcry over it, it would seem the NFL stands to face serious fallout. The media has yet to let up over the potential cover up by Good Sell or Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti and yet viewership is at an all time high.

While a few of the NFL's sponsors have voiced concern over how serious the league is at combating domestic violence or cleaning up player behavior, the reality is for every sponsor who might decide to drop their account with the NFL, there are probably ten others waiting in line to hop on board the league's money train. Besides, fans will continue to watch the games no matter who sponsors them.

Look at Baltimore Ravens fans. Their owner, Steve Bisciotti, team president, Dick Cass, and general manager, Ozzie Newsome, all knew the content of the infamous elevator video showing Ray Rice knocking out his then fiancee, Janay Palmer, with one punch. They may or may not have decided to not watch the video but they received both a verbal and written description of it. Worse, when the team's head coach, John Harbaugh, asked them to cut Rice immediately from the team, they all over ruled him and went to great lengths to minimize how long Rice would be suspended.

Ravens team leaders went to great lengths to downplay the incident as much as possible. Bisciotti probably lied at worst, or with held information at best, when questioned by his subordinate, Roger Good Sell. Bisciotti, and his top team executives then put undue pressure on Janay Palmer to downplay what happened when they attended her meeting with the commissioner. Bisciotti then goes on to basically bribe Rice by assuring him of a job with the team to ensure he sticks to the company line. Finally, he tosses the only sane person in this fiasco, his head coach, under the bus by making him the face of the organization when answering to the press in which he also sticks to the company line.

It is no wonder scores of female Ravens fans were seen wearing Ray Rice jerseys at the team's season opener. It's also no wonder why fantasy football players are angered over the extended suspension of Rice. And if the Ravens fall short of the playoffs this year, their fans will scream it is because of the unfair treatment of Ray Rice.

Whether it is Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson, Ray McDonald, or any of the scores of other NFL players who screw up while off the field this season, the fans don't care. They continue to follow their favorite teams because they provide a wonderful distraction to their own mundane lives. They will continue to purchase the numerous products pitched to them during commercial breaks while wearing their favorite player jerseys whether the player is a convicted felon or not.

Until the NFL becomes the No Fan League, we are only fooling ourselves if we think the league, its owners, team executives, and commissioner are committed to cleaning up player behavior.

 

Excellent work, Mr. Good Sell.

Hold Your Applause

For those who want to congratulate Roger Goodell, the Baltimore Ravens, and the NFL as a whole for extending the suspension of Ray Rice after TMZ released footage of the star running back looking more like a young George Foreman flattening Joe Frazier, hold your applause. They have done far more harm than good throughout this process. 

Commissioner Goodell is fortunate to have increased the money owners swim in. He should be looking for a new job but because he has done a terrific job of increasing revenue across the league, he will survive this public relations storm. There is no excuse for him to have passed judgment on Rice if his claims of not having seen the video are true. How do you hand out a punishment when you know you do not have all the facts? To claim the casino or police would not hand over the tape doesn't fly. He could have, and should have, forced Rice's hand by simply telling him he will be suspended indefinitely until he has seen all of the evidence. Furthermore, why would he interview Rice's victim, his then fiancee and now wife, with Ray sitting next to her? Anyone who has seen an episode of Law and Order knows this just doesn't lead to the truth. Goodell more than fumbled the ball with his investigation, he tried to pull one over the public and it has come back to bite him.

As for the Baltimore Ravens, they are only terminating Rice's contract because they fear the public's wrath more than they will miss Rice's tough running. If Baltimore had any sense of decency, Rice's contract would have been terminated last spring. However, they had more important matters to contend with like what might happen if Rice received just a two game suspension and then signed with division rivals Pittsburgh or Cincinnati? By releasing him now, that is no longer a fear because no organization short of an Al Davis run Oakland would sign this guy.

Worst of all is the NFL as a group. What other profession goes so far to find ways to hang on to young men whose conduct is criminal? Whether it is domestic violence, DUI, assault, multiple failed drug tests, or making joke bomb threats at an airport, the NFL rewards far too many of its players with big money contracts when they really should send them packing. This goes back decades. I remember Bill Parcells cutting a player who missed a team meeting. When the rarely used player pointed out that Lawrence Taylor also missed the meeting, Parcells is reported to have told the young man if he played as well as Taylor played he would still have a job.

The NFL Players Association has to quit fighting the suspensions of the criminal component in the league and start insisting ownership and the league begin taking a harder stance on players who belong behind bars and not on the gridiron. Only when the league office, ownership, and the NFL Players Association agree to rid the league of these players will we begin to see significant improvement in the off field behavior of its players. Commissioner Goodell and the owners have to view Ray Rice as more than a sacrificial lamb who will hopefully get fans and the media off their backs. They have to view Rice as the start of a new era in the NFL in which players are no longer rewarded with nice contracts while being allowed to live by a set of rules that the rest of us do not get to live by. Only time will tell if today is the beginning of such a new era or just another attempt by the NFL to present an image that just isn't real.

Whiners Deserve Their Day

     America has turned into a nation of whining brats.  I don't mean a few citizens, I mean all of us. From the top down, we are a bunch of whiners.
     Recently, 50 U.S. senators sent NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell a letter asking him to disallow the use of the name Redskins for the Washington franchise.   Sure, the name is offensive but is has been around longer than most Americans have been alive and suddenly it is offensive.  Special interest groups have failed to convince Redskins owner Daniel Snyder to change the team name but he refuses to budge on the issue.  Good for him.  Besides, doesn't our congress have more pressing matters to solve?
     Buccaneers, Raiders, and Vikings were all groups who used to rape and pillage but I don't see anyone pressuring their owners to change their team names.  America's team, the Dallas Cowboys refers to a group of Americans who Hollywood has depicted, among other things, as people who killed Native Americans.  Does anyone really think Jerry Jones will change the team's name?
     We do not like what Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling says in a private conversation that was probably illegally recorded and then sold to the media and now we insist he sell his team.  Clipper fans want a new owner but love heir team.  Why don't they quit whining and do what fans did when I grew up?  Former Oakland A's owner Charlie Finley was hated by everyone.  The players on his World Series winning teams left in droves and the fans followed because he was so tight fisted.  It got so bad, the A's were lucky if they drew 3,000 fans to a home game.
     Our whining was backed up by our actions.  Meanwhile, the Clippers will continue selling out games because Los Angeles fans love a winner.  However, they won't care how nice their owner is if the team loses; they just won't go to the games.
     Our whining goes beyond sports.  Teachers love to whine, believe me, I know.  For the past thirty years, I taught numerous subjects at several schools and there was whining at all levels, including plenty from me.  The work load for teachers is enormous and requires most to work beyond their contracted hours.  Grading papers, calling parents, and staff meetings are not why people go into teaching but they come with the job.  I guess the pay is miserable too but I could not complain about the $90,000.00 I was earning in my final year.
     Teachers will whine about poorly behaved students, weak administrators, and changing curriculum, but again, those are also part of the job.  However, if you really want to make a teacher complain, just change their classroom and you will get an earful.  I knew it was time to retire when I had to change my classroom three times in one year and I did not complain about.  I no longer cared which told me it was time to leave.
     Lets face it, we all whine.  We will complain about our meal at a place like Applebee's and then go back there the following week because we do not want to cook our own meals.  We will complain about how much we pay for our cell phone service and then rush out to buy the latest smart phone which, as most of you know, comes with a higher bill.  We hate the price of gas but still drive to work rather than take public transportation.  Worst of all, we complain about our elected leaders only to continually reelect them.
     We love to complain about our kids but never change our parenting techniques because it requires too much work on our part.  Instead, our kids problems are the fault of our schools, exes, bosses, or their step parents.  However, it is never our fault.  We are now allowed to bring children into this world, farm them out to be raised by others, and then complain about the way they turn out.
     That's okay because kids whine too.  Finding a kid who does not whine is about as easy as finding a needle in a hay stack.  Their internet you pay for is too slow.  You won't give them the newest cell phone so they can't sit with the cool kids at lunch.  They have to get dressed in front of their peers for PE because the school is too cheap to give students their own private dressing stalls.  It's too hot, too cold, not enough or too old.  And all we do is scratch our heads and whine to our friends about why our kids whine so much.  It's just not fair.
     I propose we change Wednesday to Whinesday.  In fact, I am going to whine about it until congress does something.  I am sure once they become aware of it they will write our President a letter asking him to make the name change.  But first, they have to do something really important and change the name of the Washington Redskins.