With the NFL season fully underway, mid-September is usually a great time for sports fans. Baseball races are coming down to the wire, and real football has finally arrived. However, 2014 seems to be different. The NFL is making headlines, but it isn't for the games on the field; it is for the behavior of the players off the field, and it is bringing national attention to the NFL for all the wrong reasons.
Usually, the dawn of a new NFL season steals headlines in the world of sports, but the fact that it is stealing headlines in the world of national news broadcasts has not necessarily been a good thing for the league.
Before I delve into the current problems facing the NFL and the game of football, I would like to provide some kind of context as to how our country views the sport that we all love. We love baseball because of the marathon-like mentality of the game. It is a daily grind that truly separates the best from the worst. We love hockey and basketball because of the pure athleticism that those sports demand. Football is in a realm of its own though. It is viewed as the sport of warriors, and the pinnacle of masculinity. To succeed in the NFL is to pass the ultimate test of manhood. Each and every Sunday, we spend hours watching our beacons of toughness battle one another in a sport where only the strong survive. Sundays during football season are like religion to millions of people across the country. However, what has recently come to the forefront and brought the NFL into the national spotlight, sadly, has nothing to do with Sunday. It has to do with each and every other day of the week, and the league has taken a gigantic publicity hit because of how it has represented itself on those other six days of the week.
Names like Ray McDonald and Greg Hardy may not be familiar to casual football fans. However, if you are even the faintest follower of the league, you surely are familiar with names such as Adrian Peterson and Ray Rice, and those are two names that have headlined national news stories from coast to coast in recent weeks. Video of Ray Rice physically assaulting his wife in an Atlantic City casino surfaced, and people were disgusted. How could an NFL player strike a woman he supposedly was in love with for the world to see and claim that he did nothing wrong?
Charges were levied against Adrian Peterson claiming that he had abused his own children, and Peterson responded that while he may not be a perfect parent, he was surely not a child abuser. What followed that? What followed was more claims that Peterson had abused a different child of his, and his image took even more of a hit (no pun intended).
As two of the stars of the league, and the faces of the Baltimore Ravens and Minnesota Vikings were being thrown under the bus of public scrutiny, the NFL seemed to be enabling its stars. Rice was given a soft punishment by the league, and only after a public uproar was he suspended indefinitely by the NFL. Until the video of Rice physically striking his wife emerged, it seemed as though the NFL was being extremely lenient in its punishment of a man who had no hesitation to abuse his fiancée.
While there is no actual video evidence of Peterson physically abusing his children, the fact that these charges arose only days after the videos of Rice arose only brightened the spotlight on the NFL and its recent displays of social deviancy. National news outlets ran stories about how the NFL was a league full of thugs, and organizations for the support of the rights of women and children felt as though it were open season to fire unimpeded shots at the most popular sport in the country. And while I am in no way condoning the actions of Rice, Hardy, McDonald, Peterson, and any other man in any walk of life who chooses to abuse women and/or children, there is one thing I find troubling about this whole situation.
Dissimilar upbringings, faiths, ethnicities, races and religions are not only represented in the NFL, but they are represented in the general makeup of the American population at large. What makes the league so great is that it is a meritocracy. Those who find the most success are those who combine talent and work ethic to turn into superstars. In the democratic state that is our country, individual talent and work ethic bring about societal elites. Status is based upon merit. If you work hard enough, then you will receive a status worthy of your perseverance. Yet, despite all of that talent and work ethic, we as sports fans completely compartmentalize the men we idolize on the field from the men that they might be off the field. If our favorite basketball player goes out on the court and scores 50 points, then we overlook any sort of personal flaws and celebrate his on-court ability. If our favorite baseball player goes out and hits a game-winning home run, we do the same thing, and such is the case for our favorite football players as well. However, what the developments and events of recent months has shown us is that despite what we see on the field, our favorite athletes may in fact be flawed more than most of us could ever imagine, and it seems as though we are placing the blame for this squarely upon not only the sport of football, but the NFL itself, and that is where I find an enormous fault with this belief.
As I said before, the American sports society views the NFL differently than it views any other sports league we know. Games on Sundays are wars. Whether it be wars between offensive and defensive linemen, wars between Raiders and Chiefs fans, or whether it be simply wars between opposing fantasy football owners, Sundays in the fall bring out the most temerarious feelings from deep down inside us, and we expect the same from the players we cheer on the field. For those three hours, we want to see our heroes dig down as far as they can and summon each and every waking breath they have to put it all on the line in the name of our team. Yet, when the game is over, we want them to make a 180 degree turn and fall into line until next Sunday comes. In theory, this seems simple, but is it actually a realistic expectation? What we have seen in recent weeks has been a true illustration that it surely is not realistic.
Before they even enter the league, professional football players must be of a different breed. Battling in the trenches and going mano a mano is something that only a select few can do. There is a reason that sprained joints and broken bones are only minor setbacks in the NFL. The players in the NFL are viewed by most fans as superhuman. Broken nose? Suck it up and play. Pulled muscle? Tape it up and get back in the game. These men are modern day gladiators, and we lionize them for being so. If their physical ability on the field is celebrated on Sundays, should we really expect them to be able to tone back that physicality from Monday through Saturday? I think it is a fair question to ask.
What men like Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson have done is 100% inexcusable. Grown men striking women and children is unacceptable, no matter the circumstances. However, I think that looking to the NFL to guide our society in general toward a solution to this problem is unfair. Despite the pressure that the league has been under in recent weeks to stiffen its policies on domestic violence, I think if we really want to stop domestic violence, we need to start at a place far from the National Football League. I am happy that what has gone on in the league has brought domestic violence issues to the forefront of our national concerns, but I have sincere reservations about using the NFL as the leading force in combating these issues.
Without question, in many cases, the NFL can definitely be used to gauge the feelings of the American society as a whole, but I think in this particular case, the NFL should really have little, if any, bearing on how we as a society view domestic violence. Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson should be celebrated for their on-field merits, but their behavior off the field should equate to ostracism and condemnation. What amounts to a great "football mentality" should be celebrated on Sundays, but we need to draw a line between on-field idols and off-field idols. There are lines that men should never cross, and despite an occupation that may seem contrary to socially acceptable lines of thinking, the actions of players like Hardy, Rice, McDonald, and Peterson are unworthy of any sort of festivity, and unfair to expect. However, I think it is also unfair to expect an organization such as the National Football League to be at the forefront of a movement towards peaceful and tranquil relationships. The NFL is still a league of warriors, and I think that recent weeks have proven the fact that the league is unable to be at the forefront of a societal movement that should have started years and years ago.
I am all for the eradication of domestic violence in our society, but I am also aware of the fact that this is a problem that will surely not be solved overnight. If in any way the NFL can help expedite these evolutions, then I am all for it, but I do not think that looking at an organization that is based upon violence is the best way to suggest a mainstream solution to a problem that has been rooted within our culture for centuries.
We use the NFL for many things, but I think that attempts to use Peterson and Rice's indiscretions as a gateway into the resolution of domestic violence is wrong. The game of football is inherently violent, so in order to solve real world problems dealing with real world violence, I will never believe that the NFL should be our primary source of inspiration.
Daily Diamondbacks Update: At this point, it is basically a race to stay out of last place in the National League. The DBacks hold a 2.5 game lead on the Rockies for that position, but trying to finish 14th as opposed to 15th surely is nothing to celebrate. Opening Day 2015 cannot come fast enough.
Daily Giants Update: Speaking of bad teams, an 0-2 start surely does not have me encouraged about the Giants this season. Through the first two weeks, there have been a whole lot of negatives and not too many positives. However, the Giants started 0-2 in 2007 and won the Super Bowl, so it is surely too early to give up hope, especially for a die-hard fan like myself. Houston comes to Giants Stadium this Sunday. Let's Go G-Men!
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