Let’s keep it in perspective. The players consider this to be their job, just as you consider your place of work to be just a job. At your job you have people who get arrested for domestic violence, DUI, assault, disorderly conduct, etc., just like in the NFL (and every other major sport). The only difference between them and you is that you don’t have a guy with a camera and notebook watching your every move trying to get famous by breaking a big story.
We hold players to a higher standard. After all, they are lucky enough to get paid millions for playing a game and living their dream. We hold them up as idol and people we should emulate, so naturally we’re disappointed and angry when they fall. But should we hold them to that higher standard? You wouldn’t hold your coworker to that standard, or even your boss.
I’m as guilty as anyone else in this regard. I think my teams should be clean and pure and I think that your team has a bunch of scumbags on it, because that’s what fans do, they back their own teams and feed on hatred of their rivals. Of course, it’s not true. It’s never true. Our participation in sports consists largely of self-delusion. This recent spate of incidents broke through that and it bothers you. I understand. But it doesn’t get better with any other sport or any other team. It’s a simple fact of sports that these supremely talented people act the same way we mortals do, and we have to either accept that or quit watching because it will never change.
(bolding mine)
Yeah, I would hold my bosses, co-workers, etc, to that same standard. If one of my bosses got arrested for domestic violence, child abuse, dogfighting, rape, etc, it would totally change how I felt about that person and I would probably start avoiding them as much as possible. I believe that at least a not-insignificant portion of other people that I work with would feel the same way. I also believe that if, say, my manager was arrested for knocking out his wife and it made the newspapers, he would most likely be fired. Even if it wasn’t in the paper, word would get around and no one would want to work with/for them. I understand what you are saying about how our expectations are higher for public figures, but I think that’s a good thing given that tons of people look up to and strive to emulate their behavior, good or bad.
And yes, I realize that there are likely some people I know that have done horrible things, unknown to me. It doesn’t change anything. I can’t say “well there’s probably a lot more that would bother me if I knew, so it’s okay that you beat your kids with a chunk of rebar. Everybody probably does it except me.”
In my thread on the whole Ray Rice thing, Hamlet made some similar points. My argument below involves some copying and pasting from my response to him in that thread, and some changes and additions relevant to this one.
I understand the point you’re making here, and my first response is that you’re absolutely right. There are thousands of people, working in all sorts of professions, who are domestic abusers and who get to keep their jobs. This is the reality of the world.
My first response, i guess, is to ask whether you think they SHOULD keep their jobs? After all, simply arguing that most companies don’t fire the spouse-beaters is sort of begging the very question we’re asking here: should they fire them? I tend to think the world might be improved if we made clear to these violent people that a possible consequence of their actions is loss of livelihood. Maybe, rather than simply asserting that Rice’s firing is an aberration, we might shift the discussion by calling it a good start?
Of course, this runs us up against a problem that has been raised a couple of times already in this discussion, namely that putting an abuser in jail or out of a job often has a detrimental effect on the very people we’re trying to protect: the spouse and children. I’m honesty not sure what to do about this. My first-order solution might be to create an adequate safety net for the victims, so they are less likely to have their whole socio-economic future dictated by the earnings of their abusive spouse. But i’m also realistic enough to understand that the general trend in terms of safety net spending in America is leaning towards less rather than more.
As for the issue of standards, not only do fans and the public hold players to a higher standard, but players, teams, and the league all portray themselves as people who offer more to society than just football. They are constantly selling themselves, their organizations, and their league as social benefactors. Because of this stuff, i believe that it’s not unreasonable to treat the NFL differently from “regular” employers in making evaluations of situations like this.
The NFL sells a product: football. But doing this is, to a considerable extent, about selling a larger image and selling entertainment more generally. The league is, in a very real sense, inextricable from its public relations in a way that some businesses are not.
The league, and its teams, and even the individual players themselves, buy into the idea that they all serve a broader purpose to the nation and the community than simply playing football. Why else the obsession with pink ribbon days and support the troop days and all the other charity-related PR bullshit that they go in for? Every time a player or a coach or an owner does something good, we have it pushed in our faces as an example of how civic-minded they are. Well, if they see themselves as accountable to public sentiment when they do all this good stuff, shouldn’t they also be accountable for the shitty stuff too?
What i’m saying here is that it’s not just the fans who set the players up as role models; they do that themselves, and so do the teams and the league. They are a big, self-promoting PR machine that constantly talks up their own value to the community. Hell, Rice himself was getting positive publicity not too long ago for his efforts in an anti-bullying campaign! At the time it was plastered all over the Ravens website, and was also noted on NFL.com.
I don’t claim to have all the answers here. I sort of understand the sentiment that a person should not be penalized at work for things he does off the clock. But when you’re in the pubic image game, you’re never really off the clock, at least in the minds of the people who watch you and support your product.
I’m also not a hard-line law-and-order nut. I’d prefer that our legal and prison system be less draconian. But i would also prefer to start on that road with offenders who commit non-violent offenses, rather than offenders who knock smaller, weaker people unconscious for little or no reason.
As a faculty member at a university, i work in a profession that is often derided by conservatives for its excessive workplace protections (tenure, strong unions, etc.). I’m a member of a pretty strong faculty union, and our collective bargaining agreement places restrictions on when faculty can be terminated, with particularly strong protections for those with tenure. I’m actually not familiar enough with the specifics to know what would happen to a tenured faculty member who got caught doing what Ray Rice did, but i personally believe that we should be able to fire that person. I say this not because anyone cares very much about me or my work, but simply to demonstrate that my own argument here goes beyond football, and would apply to people in my own area of employment as well.
For me, this whole issue is, as Marley has suggested, not just about the presence of a few criminals. I’m well aware of the fact that every occupation has its share of assholes, thugs, and lawbreakers. It’s about how the institution—an institution that actively sells itself as a socially-beneficial organization when doing so will help its bottom line—deals with stuff like this.
I decided, at the beginning of the season, that i wasn’t going to watch the NFL this years. I dropped out of all of my fantasy leagues, one of which i’d been a member of since not long after i came to live in the US. I love sports, and i love football, so i was worried that it would be hard, but we’re in Week 3 and i haven’t yet watched a single down. And that includes a nationally-televised Thursday night game between the Ravens and the Steelers, something that would have been an absolute must-watch for me in the past, given that i don’t get to watch many Ravens games living in San Diego.
The reasons for my boycott are bigger than the Ray Rice incident alone. If anything, this one was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back. My beef with the NFL ranges from big social issues like domestic violence and the way it dealt with the whole concussion problem, through to narrower business- and consumer-related actions like blackouts and the expense of merchandise, through to things like the constant attempts to extort money for new stadiums from taxpayers while at the same time relying on arguments about the free market to justify gouging their fans for every possible cent.
I understand that some of these problems apply to other leagues. Baseball has social problems, and baseball owners are also experts at advancing the cause of corporate socialism when they want a new stadium. But the NFL is the big boy on the block, the archetype of everything that’s crappy about professional sport. It has a bit of competition from FIFA and the IOC, but here in the US it’s the NFL that rules the roost.
I’m not arguing that other people need to follow my example, although i do believe that the most useful way to influence a money-obsessed organization like the NFL is by refusing to be a customer. If you want to keep watching football, go right ahead. But when i’m making a decision that is mine to make, that reflects my own values, and that doesn’t affect your own choices, see if you can resist the urge to tell me to “keep it in perspective.” If you can do that, i won’t accuse you of being an enabler of domestic violence. Deal?
Help me to understand what your point is here. Jason Kidd is an awful human being. ESPN as a corporate entity certainly does not care about the victims of domestic violence.
Are these reasons people should give the NFL their money, or what?
Kidd pleaded guilty to domestic violence in 2001 and … something. (He also had a DUI right around the time the Nets hired him as coach, but that’s a whole other thing.) Therefore ESPN doesn’t care. I thought I addressed this in my first post in this thread:
Apparently it’s ESPN’s fault - not TMZ, who actually reported this, or any other network, or the public at large - that this incident turned into something of a tipping point. Therefore… something.
I mean, I remember the Kidd thing. That’s granted. Chamique Holdsclaw, very scary incident and definite mental health problems, even though it’s a super weird example to bring up as opposed to like Floyd Mayweather or James Harrison. All granted.
But yeah, I assume there’s supposed to be, like, a “therefore…” part in there, too. It seems like this is supposed to be a defense of the NFL, which I would object to if it were, but I always have people telling me that I’m putting words in their mouths when it comes to this kind of stuff.
Was it a sweetheart deal, though? My understanding is that as a first time offender, he got the same result the average joe on the street could expect. If so, then it wouldn’t be fair to call it a “screw up.”
It probably was, although it’s almost entirely discretionary so you’re right that it’s not like the law was broken.
Your average Joe gets into some alternative pre-trial program overwhelmingly because he’s gotten his first DUI, or when he shoplifts from Wal-Mart or gets caught with speed in his pockets as a first time offense, or maybe if he pushes his neighbor or something and gets a simple assault charge. I definitely would never have dared to ask a DA for ARD (Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition, the equivalent to what Rice got) in Pennsylvania if I had a no-name client who did what he did, because I’d have pissed them off.
As I said in the “future of football” thread, for me the whole brain damage thing pretty much trumps everything else. I’d been a football fan since the 1960s, but once Ta-Nehisi Coates started writing about the ex-NFL players with CTE two or three years ago, I knew I couldn’t keep on watching. How could I derive pleasure from watching people cause permanent brain damage to each other?
So I am sitting out this football season, just as I did last year and as I will next year.