By now I’m sure you’ve seen the news coverage of Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice’s indefinite suspension from the NFL following the release by TMZ of a video in which Rice knocks his fiancé, Janay Palmer, unconscious in an elevator and proceeds to drag her body across a casino floor. It seems rather straightforward – Rice undoubtedly acted in an unnecessarily violent manner toward another person and was duly punished for his behavior. That’s not the case. This incident occurred in February, and both Rice and Palmer were arrested at the time. In March, Rice was indicted on third-degree aggravated assault. The charges were later dropped when he agreed to undergo counseling, though the NFL did suspend him for two games. Rice’s indefinite suspension from the NFL came only after TMZ released the video evidence on September 8th of the extent of Rice’s actions in February.
So why did the NFL take so long to act?
We have a problem in this country. We’ve turned athletes into gods. These men and women (but mostly men) who posses a particular skill, whether it be running fast or throwing far or hitting hard, have become so incredibly popular that they’re all we care about. We know their height and weight, we wear their jerseys with pride, we lose our voices cheering for them in the stands at their games. We teach our children that if they can run fast, they can get a scholarship to college and then be 22-year-old millionaire gods just like the ones they see on television every week. On many college campuses, athletes are given a free pass – they live in the nicest dorms and eat the best food and take exclusive classes so that they can focus on sports and not actually on getting an education. We’re failing these athletes every day by not expecting from them what we expect from every student – attendance, participation, and academic success. We’re teaching these athletes that they are only as valuable as how fast they can run or how far they can throw the ball. And when they become professional athletes, that value translates into millions of dollars in revenue for a franchise. It’s a great system for the NFL – the most popular professional sports league in the country – and a terrible system for its athletes.
The problem with the value that the NFL places on its players is that it in turn exempts them from being punished for basically anything. What team owner is going to risk losing millions of dollars by firing one of his players? That’s not good business sense. Never mind that many of these players receive DUIs and DWIs, are arrested for assault and drug possession, and are cited for disorderly conduct. Never mind that if you type “crimes c” into Google, “crimes committed by NFL players” is the first suggestion. Never mind that U-T San Diego keeps an NFL Arrests Database. What’s important is that these men keep playing and keep making money for their teams.
Have we really become so culturally obsessed with professional athletes that we’re willing to excuse their bad behavior so we can keep watching them throw a ball every Sunday afternoon? Are we really satisfied with the NFL’s “pics or it didn’t happen” attitude regarding the indefinite suspension of Ray Rice? When do we say enough is enough? When do we hold these men accountable for their actions, regardless of the millions of dollars at stake? Since when did millions of dollars in entertainment revenue become more valuable than a woman’s life or a child’s life or anyone’s life?
Athletes are not gods. We cannot as a society keep placing these men up on pedestals and never expect those pedestals to crumble beneath them. We must learn to respect athletes for their talent and value them as human beings. There is a distinct and critical difference between the two. Until we do that, these crimes will keep happening and this conversation will continue and in the meantime we will spend millions of dollars so that the men who commit these crimes can run around a field in front of thousands of screaming fans wearing their team’s colors and drinking overpriced beer.
I’m not saying that I hate football, or that I think it’s a waste of money, or that we should just get rid of the NFL. That’s not what I think. And I’m not saying that every NFL athlete is a criminal – that is NOT the case. What I’m saying is this: We can do better. We must do better. We owe it to our athletes and to our children who want to someday become athletes to fix this broken system. We have to stop paying people millions of dollars because they can run fast and throw far. We have to stop excusing bad behavior because it might cost us money to acknowledge it. We have to stop ignoring bad behavior because recognizing it would mean recognizing that athletes are fallible just like us. Athletes are human beings just like us. Sometimes they make mistakes, they make bad choices, they screw up. When they do, they should be punished for it and we should all move on. Maybe if we treated our athletes who behave badly like we treat everyone else who behaves badly, we would have better behaved athletes. I don’t know. I don’t know what the answer is to this problem. I just know that it’s real and it’s time to take it seriously. Commissioner Goodell, you’ve got the ball. Please don’t drop it.