One of the first things I ever wore once I was escaped the womb was a Denver Broncos shirt. I didn't have a choice in which team to root for, I was immediately thrown into the deep end of the Broncos fandom. And really, I got lucky. The Broncos are one of the NFL's classiest teams and one of its most competitive. Pat Bowlen, who sadly can no longer be at the helm of the team he loved due to Alzheimers disease, only ever wanted one thing and that was to win. But it was never at any cost. Throughout the years there have been a handful of incidents involving players antics off the field that he did not stand for. Most of the time, those players were either traded or allowed to walk via free agency. Fortunately for the Broncos, they don't tend to sign many players with questionable character, especially since Peyton Manning took over as QB. He demands that everyone around him be totally focused on and committed to the game, something that can't happen if your off the field distractions are too much. Each team has their own policies and handles their personnel differently. But what punishment they can dish out for player offenses comes down from the league. And the NFL doesn't have the best track record of making the punishment fit the crime.
The NFL as a whole has always had issues dealing with its problem child players. The latest grouping of controversies is not the first time Commissioner Roger Goodell has played with fire, but he has never been this close to the actual flame before. Many are calling for him to lose his job, something that seems unlikely as more time goes by, and I can't say I disagree. But firing him is not going to solve the problem. The entire culture of the NFL is what needs to change. This has always been a league that's been soft on punishment and has dealt with everything from drug charges to gun charges and now domestic and child abuse charges. It is a league that has taken an "ignore it and it will go away" stance far too many times and on way too many issues. It is also a league that has grown in popularity among women over the last decade or so, ironic considering how little value the NFL seems to place on women in general. Ray Rice is not the first NFL player accused of beating his wife (O.J. Simpson, anyone?). But he is one of the first to have the entire incident of domestic violence captured on video and shown to the world. Domestic violence is typically a he said/she said type of crime, as evidenced by the NFL's apparent lack of investigation into the matter. According to law enforcement, the NFL received the tape of Rice punching his then-fiancee in the face in an elevator before dragging her unconscious body out of the casino as passersby watched but did nothing to help the woman. Goodell says he never saw the full tape, choosing instead to take Rice and his wife at their word when they both claimed she initiated the fight and he was simply defending himself. Common sense should have told him that was not the way to handle the situation. What is a battered woman going to say while sitting next to her abuser? Of course she said it was her fault and defended him, for what I'm sure was not the first time. I don't care what a woman comes at you with, you do not clock her in the face the way he did. He is an NFL player, by definition bigger and stronger than most men, and he used all of that physical strength against her. Even if a longer tape exists where she took a swing at him or pushed him, it still does not justify what he did to her. Either Goodell knew of the tape but didn't want to make a big deal of it and chose to trust Rice's version of events (and even more sickening, he condoned it by not punishing him all that severely), or he did not know about it and has little control over what goes on in his own offices. Either way, he is not qualified to be Commissioner anymore. But I do not think he will lose that position as he has the support of many NFL owners, most of them men of his age or older who would likely rather not rock the boat and thus will not vote him out.
As if the NFL needed more negative publicity, another high-profile player, Adrian Peterson, was arrested and charged with child abuse over the weekend. While he was inactive for yesterday's game, word broke today that no suspension is forthcoming and he will be allowed to continue playing as his case makes its way through the legal system. The Rice issue was very black and white in terms of public opinion, although some people still try to defend him, but the Peterson abuse charges are having a much different effect. Some people seem to think he was justified in hitting his son with a switch (for those not familiar, that's a branch off of a small tree), even after seeing the photos of the injuries and hearing testimony from the boy saying he was afraid of his father. Others, myself included, believe that it does fall under the umbrella of child abuse and the D.A. is doing the right thing in charging him. Will his NFL status get him off? Probably, so all of this is a moot point. His defense, as well as what others are using to defend him, is that he simply punished the boy the same way he was punished while growing up and so there's nothing wrong with it. The problem with that argument is that the times have changed, and for the better in that there are now laws protecting little ones from overzealous punishment. What was perfectly legal and not frowned upon a decade or two ago is now considered abuse. Just because it was legal when you were growing up doesn't mean it's automatically going to be okay for you to do to your own kid now. I was hit on a few occasions as a child, but never anything close to abuse. However, I did witness abuse while growing up (both domestic and child) and I've seen what it does to those kids and how they react. If the kid is saying he's terrified of his father, that's a sign that it is not just an occasional use of force as discipline. Kids who are just disciplined every now and then by spanking are not afraid of their parents. Also, just because you were punished in a certain way does not mean you have to do the same with your child. While I got a few spankings in my youth, Miss N has never known that form and discipline. it will be interesting to see how this plays out, but the fact that he is not even drawing a suspension after having criminal charges filed against him pretty much tells you the league doesn't intend to do a damn thing about his situation.
So what does the NFL need now? To conduct an independent investigation into the league's practices and policies and, if necessary, oust Goodell. Yes, there's supposedly an investigation taking place but it is being run by two NFL owners, an absurd conflict of interest. Someone from the outside with total credibility and absolutely nothing to lose needs to come in, go through everything and make a recommendation for what comes next. Let us not forget, we don't just have the abuse allegations here, there's also the league's drug policy, whether they're taking proper safety measures and the numerous player/former player suicides that have been attributed to brain damage sustained on the field. Everything about this league screams mismanagement and it's not something that should be ignored, it's been too long now. How many more women have to be beaten, or even killed, before something changes? How many more players have to die? The NFL needs to take a page out of the book of other leagues in how they deal with things. The NHL, for example, has a strict policy when it comes to drugs of any kind. Just this year a player was pulled over blocks away from his team's arena and found to be under the influence of something, as well as carrying cocaine in his vehicle. Before the ink was dry on his arrest form, he was suspended indefinitely and put into the league's substance abuse program. Furthermore, the NFL needs to start teaching their players how to be men when they come into the league. By many accounts, there is little more than a day of lectures about finances and who to call when you get in trouble for rookies. They are essentially handing young men a pile of money, most of whom have never seen that much money before in their lives, and letting them operate under the impression that they are the gladiators of our times and as such can have/do/buy whatever they want. It's obvious that is going to lead to trouble, there's absolutely no direction given to them. In the NHL, every rookie is required to live with the family of a veteran teammate for at least a season. For example, the Avalanche's top rookie last year lived with our backup goaltender, who has a wife and three kids, the youngest of whom was a newborn. He had a curfew and was expected to help out around the house, babysit, etc. He was taught responsibility and how to manage his money even before he got the big contract (NHL rookies make less than a million dollars for their first two years in the league). This program has been around for eons in the NHL and they've had few problems with their players when it comes to abuse of either drugs or women. Don't get me wrong, there are NHL playboys and dudes who are not good humans in general, but that is true of any league and any profession. But when those matter do flare up, the NHL dishes out meaningful punishment. The NFL needs to start doing the same thing and I don't think Goodell is the man to get that done. Anything he does from here on out is a joke and all of this is overshadowing what should have been a great start to a new football season.
