By Mark Esposito, Weekend Blogger
Good afternoon folks, and welcome to the sports holy day known as NFL Sunday. We mostly all love it. The collisions, the sparkling cheerleaders, the feats of athleticism that would have made an ancient Greek Olympian proud. It’s all there – drama, excitement, pageantry, bright colors and morality. Yep there’s bad boys (think Oakland Raiders, Baltimore Ravens) and good guys (anybody named Manning or Russell Wilson) and there’s music – marching bands, pep bands, loud speakers blaring just about any rap, punk, pop, or country song you like depending on locale. Football is king! Long Live The King!
But the king has had better seasons.
From the professional gladiators to the high school gladiators-in-training, football’s morality play has come off the skids. The carefully cultivated image of athlete as hero that echoes through the centuries from the plains at Marathon to an Olympic stadium in 1936 Berlin overseen by a bad man with a bad mustache, yes, and all the way to modern day techno-proficient, thunder booming, firework blasting sports theatres, Football America is suffering.
Maybe it was avarice or a sense of invulnerability or most likely hubris. All of football was riding high early this year. The NFL was enjoying record profits even having the audacity to ask its halftime acts to pay it for the privilege of sweating it out before millions of Americans at home and in person. It was pushing the Old Man of US sports, Major League Baseball, from the headlines by moving its pre-season draft of players to prime time in … gasp … May, smack in the middle of baseball season. The colleges had just finished a game of musical chairs and chicken all at the same time and got the venerable, doting NCAA to approve a bowl championship, an acknowledgment of the 5 Big Boy Conferences, and the shunning of anything approaching governing the Big 5.
Yes football was riding high — but there were signs of looming disasters to come.
First, initial disapproval of a three-quarters of a billion dollar payoff of former players in an epidemic of head injury lawsuits that one judge and lots of players called “inadequate.” Then one of the elders (though he’s only in his mid 50s) of sports, NBA owner Mark Cuban, reminding us like the Oracle of Delphi that there are unalterable rules of American business and they are porcine-based (here):
“I think the NFL is 10 years away from an implosion. I’m just telling you: Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. And they’re getting hoggy. Just watch. Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. When you try to take it too far, people turn the other way. I’m just telling you, when you’ve got a good thing and you get greedy, it always, always, always, always, always turns on you. That’s rule No. 1 of business.”
Everybody laughed and then turned the volume up so we could hear the latest thud of helmet-on-helmet in the coliseum of our choice. But somewhere in an elevator in Atlantic City, an off-campus room in Tallahassee and a ubiquitous freshman locker room in Sayreville things were getting very “hoggy.”
It hit like a maelstrom. A gossip site called TMZ published a video (here) of Baltimore Ravens star, Ray Rice, punching his girlfriend in an Atlantic City casino elevator. Though Rice drug the helpless women from the elevator in front of flabbergasted security guards all the while claiming that she just had “too much to drink,” the funny bounces of football were just beginning against him. A hushed-up criminal case that died in the graveyard of paper headlines and court record books just went national and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was called before the high council of football owners (which must have looked like the assemblage of the Stonecutters from that classic Simpsons episode) to the hear the song …
Who controls the British Crown?
Who Keeps The Metric System Down?
We Do, We Do…
Who keeps Atlantis off the maps?
Who keeps the Martians under wraps?
We Do, We Do…
Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Gutenberg, a star!
We Do, We Do…
… and to answer the easily anticipated question: “Who wants to see this go away?” “We Do,” came the refrain.
But it wouldn’t go away. What was so easily contained when it was mere paper-borne dry legal allegations became a dagger of misogyny when we actually saw the lightning punch, the head of hair flying back to smash into an elevator handrail and the limp body being carried from an elevator shaft like so much dead meat. It was real and the football fantasy of hero athletes was now officially broken.
The turmoil continued in the days that followed when a law enforcement official in New Jersey told the press that he had sent the incriminating video to NFL headquarters when the case broke months ago decimating the Commissioner’s claim that he had seen only the elevator hallway video that didn’t catch the punch. An investigation by league lawyers is underway but you’d have to go a long way across Gullible’s Island to find someone who thinks it’s an impartial investigation. The press (and notably Professor Turley’s msnbc bud Keith Olbermann leading the charge from his chair at ESPN University) is calling for Commissioner Goodell’s head, but there the tousle-haired Commissioner sits overseeing the Sunday, Monday and Thursday day and night parade of sports oblivious to Cuban’s warning. In a hastily called press conference imbued with all the political gamesmanship of Republican hack, Frank Lutz, Goodell reiterated over and over that we have to “get our house in order.” (Read about that here in an illuminating piece on the sports blog Deadspin). But in what was apparently missed in the spin meeting became painfully obvious when more and more allegations by other players came rolling in: You have to put out the house fire before you “put your house in order.”
The fire came bellowing in the door with the horrific pictures of a beaten child’s body. Minnesota Viking star, Adrian Petersen, was the latest NFL’er to come into focus for abuse allegations. (here) Claiming his god-given right to discipline his kid with a piece of tree branch, Petersen was first welcomed as Father-of-The-Year by Viking’s owner Ziggy Wilf and then declared radioactive as the public outrage grew. Banished to Texas under the care of famed sports lawyer Rusty Hardin (of Roger Clemens fame) , Petersen eschewed a plea deal and is determined to fight to the last man or child to clear his name saying in what must rank as the most obvious fact on the planet: “I am not a perfect son. I am not a perfect husband. I am not a perfect parent, but I am, without a doubt, not a child abuser.” Well, true enough for the first two sentences from the father of six kids by a like number of women. We’ll see about that last sentence.
“And when it comes to domestic violence, my stance is not one of indifference. I stand firmly against domestic violence, plain and simple,” Richardson said.”To those who would suggest that we’ve been too slow to act, I ask that you consider not to be too quick to judge. Over the course of our 20 years, we have worked extremely hard to build an organization of integrity…”
Still Greg Hardy played on in that House of Integrity until the public outcry got too big and he was belatedly relegated to the “List.”
Then, in Tallahassee, SEC .. er Florida … a scandal for reigning Heisman Trophy winner Jameis Winston was rising from the ashes of a non-prosecution. Florida State University officials, shamed by their handling , mishandling and crisis management (their own crisis not the alleged victim’s,of course) of a rape allegation against the young star were goaded by that right-wing bogeyman, the US Department of Education, into actually doing what they should have done all along – investigate the charges regardless of what the Keystone Cops of Tallahassee did. FSU was also spurred by an investigation by Fox Sports (here) concluding that officials in its police and athletic departments gave confidential police investigative reports of the rape charge to Winston’s defense attorneys three days before the prosecutor in the case got it.
The head start allowed his defense attorney to get affidavits from Winston’s fellow teammate witnesses that served to exonerated Winston before the cops even spoke to them. Still a hearing is scheduled for Winston on four charges of violation of the school’s code of conduct. A former Florida Supreme Court justice is scheduled to preside at the hearing to remove the stink of the school’s last whack at justice.
For his part, Winston is upbeat despite a theft of crab legs (he says it was an oversight) and a grudging game suspension for leaping on a student union table and screaming “F–k her in the P—y” before the assembled student body. Jameis just led his team to a big win last night over Notre Dame, so all is right with the world in Tallahassee though the morality play got a little skewed. Notre Dame, you see, the perceived “good guy” of the college world has their own quarterback scandal in star pigskin thrower Everett Golson. Golson just got back on campus following a well-publicized cheating scandal. No, not the one this year at good ol’ ND in which 5 players were disciplined, but the one last year where Golson was disciplined and then welcomed back as the Prodigal Son. Notre Dame is ranked number 5 in the nation; FSU, number 2. Boola, boola!
And not to be trumped, little brother high school football chimes in with the most horrific scandal of them all involving that hoary football tradition — hazing. The Sayreville (NJ) Bombers and their legendary coach, George Najjar, winners of three of the past four sectional championships are suspended this season. (here). Seems the seniors have a novel way of team building. Seven of the team leaders including at least one Division 1 prospect (headed to where else Penn State University until last week), barged into the freshmen locker room, shut off the lights and then held down a hapless 15-year-old as one tough guy digitally penetrated the child in the posterior. Then in this temple of male machismo and anti-gay rhetoric, the hero athletes forced the child to place the digit in another body orifice. This little drill went on at different times all week according to prosecutors. The coaches, of course, knew nothing about it (and they likely didn’t though one New Jersey legislator isn’t so sanguine) having spent their time diagramming Xs and Os as the mayhem ensued. Oh, the seniors were charged with maintaining team discipline according to the coach. How’d letting the animals run the zoo work out there, coach?
Misogyny, child abuse, sexual assault, this is the score card for King Football this season. And still the crowds flock in, the money rolls in, and we are off to the game. Is Cuban right? Will football implode as the carnage among victims and their families becomes too much to bear? Will the torches and the pitchforks just get too close for the King to force His Royal Highness to finally do something? Anything? To protect women, kids and the players themselves the NFL will need more than the spin words of the Frank Lutzes of the world. It will need strong women and men in positions of power to rein in the excesses of male machismo culture and it will need a new script. One with morality placed back in the plot.
Sourced throughout
~Mark Esposito, Weekend Blogger
By the way and for better or worse, the views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not necessarily those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays of art are solely the author’s decision and responsibility. No infringement of intellectual property rights is intended and will be remedied upon notice from the owner. Fair use is however asserted for such inclusions of quotes, excerpts, photos, art, and the like.
The culture of bullies and those who turn them into heroes, those who enable them and those who engage in this behavior will eventually pay the price of societal disgust. The glory days of violence and misogyny will fade away, to be replaced with the rejection by most people, which would leave the sport or organization a shell of what it once was, OR on a positive note, becomes somethong equally entertaining and better than ever before. It happens to most cultures that glorify blood and guts ‘sports’ and activities that do harm to themselves and others, like the Roman gladiators.
I know right? People selling a product that makes millions and billions and getting compensated based on the money they made for the company and the sport.
Off with their heads those dirty capitalists!!!!!!
How can anyone suggest that the NFL is only dealing with a few bad apples? Especially when the turn the other eye approach is being done by owners and NFL executives. You remember, that tax exempt organization called the NFL that paid their top officer a reported $40 plus million!
Packers 35-3. Dolphins 21 Bears 7. Just sayn’.
Tatum and Stringley are both dead.
DBQ, That is the essence of it. There is risk in this world. That’s what makes it great! Risk/reward is something too many people don’t understand. The nannies want to feminize the world, and attorneys are predators regarding risk, making billions because people get injured.
This is just something else for the Democratic Party Moral Uplift Brigade to sermonize on Sunday about. Since they tend to break out in hives over traditional values like not committing adultery or not coveting somebody’s ass, they have to find themselves some new topics to climb into their pulpits and preach about.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Criminals and thugs should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. They should be thrown out of the league and sent back home to rob boxes of cigars out of convenience stores. Just sayn’
I do agree that the commissioner should be fired. They should get someone with some balls. Someone to tell these idiots to take a seat. To tell ESPN if they want to continually attack the game then the game will be taken off of ESPN and they can show log rolling and fishing shows 24/7. I guarantee if Pete Rozelle were around he would have made a call and all of this nonsense would have been shut down right away.
You don’t attack your partners the way they are doing and keep your gig. Sorry it doesn’t work that way. Or at least it didn’t back in the day.
I will defer and bow to Trooper and others on the status of football and the roughness factor, since I have admitted to not being a big follower of the sport. I used to watch a lot with my first husband who was an avid fan, but have hardly watched in the last 20 years. My impressions are likely flawed
🙂
@ Paul
That may be true of soccer. I don’t know.
But….here is the deal. Sports are rough. All physical sports are and will likely result in some injuries. Shoot….just being a kid, back when we were allowed to play outside, run, jump, ride bikes and do all the things that kids do is rough and injuries happen. I’ve got the scars to prove it.
Walking at night in some areas of New York is a risk. Walking in the woods can be risky. Driving to the grocery store can be risky. Life is full of risks and we can’t hide from all of them.
Unless we are press ganging people into playing professional sports now, then the players have decided to take the risks. So. People get hurt playing sports. It was their decision. Life happens and some people need to butt out of other people’s lives.
Football or any other sport is not responsible for the private lives of the players either. The bad player can and maybe should be dropped from the team or benched…..but that is a decision for the team, the coach and the player. It isn’t a reflection of the entire industry.
I love them Paul, why? I could’ve said pizza or a sausage and pepper sandwich I suppose, or I could’ve said chips and dip, nachos? Pick your fattening food of choice. Don’t forget lots and lots of beer and some fat bald guy yelling at his wife to bring him a sandwich, better Paul? Any more questions? 🙂
annie – are you speaking from personal experience?
There is no comparison with how dangerous football was back in the day and the way it is today. Which is great for the players and their families.
I remember seeing Jim Otto not being able to walk. Others having their brains scrambled. It is great that they are protecting the players better and ending some of the egregious hits that wiped out so many guys.
But football should not be ice dancing. There is a time and a place for that.
(At four o’clock in the morning every four years)
trooperyork – you know that in your heart of hearts every so often you want someone to ‘take out’ that annoying opposing playing that is doing damage to your team. Just something that puts them on the sidelines for the rest of the game would be fine. 😉
DBQ, As trooper said so well in his first comment and everyone agrees, these thugs need to be prosecuted and incarcerated. Some like to build strawmen.
It’s about glorifying violence and trauma on and off the field. Players are recognizing that having brain damage in their fifties may no be worth the glory and the cheers of the bloodthirsty spectators. Football has a sick culture, we see that in what has happened this past year. When an organization becomes this sick, they die or they are ‘put down’… Or they heal themselves and go on in a different vein.
trooper, what has happened is football has gotten bigger and faster. Mass plus velocity equals force. That is a basic physics. But, anyone who knows the history of football is that it is much less nasty than it was even 20-25 years ago. Hell, you can’t touch a QB. It’s like a school playground.
trooperyork – I have to agree with you. I remember the days of regular bounties on players or positions. Where taking people off on a stretcher was a regular part of every quarter on both sides of the field. And at least two players were reported on from the hospital. I remember them grabbing on to that single bar face-guard and swinging them out in a circle. Football needed all those players because the 1st string was lucky to get through the first half of the schedule.
“What does it say about our society when we see people who are misused or abused and we stand by, or even cheer such activity?”
No one is cheering spousal or child abuse. The over the top knee jerk reaction to try to kill an entire industry because there are some bad people in it says something about a certain segment of our society.
Those people who are breaking the laws or violating the morality of society should be dealt with on a case by case basis. That isn’t good enough for the Olberman’s and others who want to destroy an industry, tar a class of people.
If people think that football or boxing or hockey is a horrible sport played by horrible people, they will stop watching and supporting it. This is something that people will do on their own and do not need to have shouting nagging nannies telling them what to do and what to think.
DBQ – I do not think that Olbermann realizes that if they get rid of professional football, he is going to take a salary cut.
BFM, the sport the nannies love is soccer and there are serious head injuries in that sport as well. There is risk in this world. I used to see the nanny female teachers try and stop the boys from just being boys on the playground. These “no touching on the playground” rule makes the game of tag not allowed. I think your a boomer, BFM. Did you wear a helmet when you rode your bike as kid? How did you turn out?
@Nick ” Did you wear a helmet when you rode your bike as kid? How did you turn out?”
We did not wear helmets, we road for miles on roads without side walks, and we were gone for hours – most of the day. If we were not home by bed time I am pretty sure our parents would have driven around the neighborhood looking for us. Nobody tracked us with GPS, called us, or text us to call home. And we all came through it with little more than knee scrapes.
In high school I played offense and defensive line. They warned us not to spear – ram our head into the opposing player because that could damage our neck. It was legal to hold our forearm across our chest to ward off an opposing player. My favorite move was the flipper – bring the forearm up sharply into the face or neck of the opposing player. I played 8th through 12 grades.
By college I found other interests.
Now I am not a fan of any team. But I try to follow the never ending soap opera of the Redskins. Where else can you see so much drama and raw human emotion.
BTW, I think America is a land of opportunity and every boy should believe that he too can grow up and one day buy his very own professional football team to play with. Who needs fantasy football when you buy, sell and trade real players.
bfm – the important thing is that ASU beat Stanford and is in control of the PAC-12 South right now. Who cares about anything else.
@Paul
How true, how true. Some things are eternal and this victory will burn bright in the hearts of men till … well till next season anyway.
Well that’s a change.
It’s not Obama’s fault. It’s Olbermann’s fault.
Play on, boys.