The NFL has been (and is still being) raked over the coals for its reaction to Ray Rice’s assault on his wife.
(On a side note, it seems extremely odd to me that very few people are outraged that Rice isn’t in jail awaiting trial for felony assault. 
)
What gives? Why is the NFL expected to function as an extrajudicial penal system? If I worked for McDonald’s, or Delta Airlines, or General Motors, and I did what Rice did, would any of those employers be expected to fire/sanction me?
Most private companies and many government agencies do, in fact, have policies where employees in certain positions are suspended or terminated when certain charges are filed or the employee is convicted.
What makes pro sports leagues different is the fact that the people involved are public figures. A lot of people look up to these figures --including a lot of children. Therefore, they are expected to act when something goes wrong. That’s all it is.
The players’ contracts almost certainly include a morals clause. The language I found elsewhere on the internet says, “if Player has engaged in personal conduct reasonably judged by Club to adversely affect or reflect on Club, then Club may terminate this contract.”
Depending on your role with the company, their public image, and the type of crime; they might let you go. It’s not unique to the NFL, except that pretty much all their employees are high profile public figures. Not so for McDonalds, but if it was an executive then the response would likely be the same.
Not all of the employees of the NFL or the teams. I suspect that if you worked in accounting, human resources or another back office function and did the same thing, you might not be fired. In other words, the players, coaches, etc are public facing employees.
What they said. A private business can make it part of the HR manual that they’ll sack you for failing drug tests or for committing crimes on your time off (and domestic battery IS a crime) or for going on a drunken hate speech rant; or for declining to participate in the rehab program if offered. As mentioned, public visibility makes a difference. The shipping clerk in your corporation will make no news when he is referred to EAP. The VP for operations may. The public “face of the company”, however, will have to just be shown the door on the spot.
The NFL is in the business of selling entertainment. People are (in their own way) saying that they don’t want to buy entertainment that features a wife beating asshole (WBA). I don’t care if a GM factory worker is a WBA, I’m pretty sure some of them are, but it doesn’t affect my decision to buy a GM car. If the guy promoting GM cars on TV was a WBA, I’d probably be angry if GM kept paying him millions to promote the cars.
Nobody buys Delta Airlines jerseys with the name of their favorite baggage handler on the back.
Maybe true for Delta, but the Terry Brown Southwest Airlines jersey is quite popular.
My employment contract specifies clearly I can be terminated with cause if I commit a felony or conduct causing the company substantial public disgrace. Frankly I am a nobody so while it would take a bit more effort on my part to publicly disgrace my company, this shows that such requirement are in no way unique to the NFL.
It’s not unique at all. Mozilla fired Brendan Eich because he is an outspoken opponent of gay marriage. You’d better believe he’d also have been fired if it became publish knowledge that he beat up his wife. Or, for a closer parallel, try this guy.
I think the Rice situation may feel a bit odd because as consumers of entertainment, we’re somewhat conditioned to continue to accept celebrities in public roles after domestic violence incidents, whether from Hollywood (Charlie Sheen, Sean Penn, Mickey Rourke, Terrence Howard, Eric Roberts, Emma Roberts) or the music world (Chris Brown, Ozzy Osbourne, Glen Campbell). The sports world traditionally has ho-hummed such incidents, too (Bobby Cox, Jason Kidd, Brandon Marshall, Rasheed Wallace, Darryl Strawberry).
Part of the difference here has to be the availability of the video.
The NFL openly sanctions players all the time. In the same time frame that Rice got a two-game suspension for knocking this woman unconscious, it also applied a full one year ban on a player for testing positive for weed.
With a bizarre sense of proportion like that, it’s understandable that the NFL is being raked over the coals.
Much of the extra emphasis being put on this issue has to do with the fact that the NFL has been caught in a brazen lie about what they did or did not know. Their previous story was that they did not know about the video of the events that took place inside the elevator. It is now apparent they were lying. As a result, many of their more strident defenders and suck-ups in the media are attacking them, large numbers of players are grousing about it, and there’s just generally even more cynicism than there usually is.
Had the NFL released or acknowledged the video when this first came out and had given Rice a longer suspension the matter would already be largely forgotten.
There is also the fact that issues of rape and domestic violence are becoming more of a hot button issue than they were before. Sean Penn was mentioned by Tom Tildrum; if Penn did tomorrow what he did back in 1987 he’d be absolutely torn to shreds in the media and shut out of every good party in Hollywood. Bobby Cox’s punching his wife in 1995 was certainly a story, but would be ten times the story if it happened today. It’s just something people have now suddenly decided they don’t want to tolerate anymore, for a variety of reasons (the ubiquity of social media reminders that an event happened, sensitivity about other types of abuse and bullying, and so on.) Which is fine by me.
I was going to start a new thread on this specific point, but its more appropriate that I add it here.
I think I heard the video was given to the NFL by the police. I’m more irritated that the police didn’t just go right over to him and arrest him. Most people seem to be missing this point.
I don’t care about the NFL, why hasn’t he been arrested?
He was charged with misdemeanor battery and entered a pretrial diversion program.
He WAS arrested.
Goodell will have to explain his stance about discipline, and the position he (rightly) took about the bounty issue with the NO Saints, where “ignorance is no excuse”:
Here, as Jeff Toobin said last night, Goodell is stuck saying “We’re not evil [for wilfully disregarding the obvious, including the ability to demand that Rice’s attorney hand over the video before anyone made a determination what to mete out for punishment]; we’re just incompetent.”
I think the Ray Rice situation is a bit of an outlier. It is not terribly uncommon that professional athletes are accused of domestic violence, drug possession, etc. What makes this case of particular interest is that there’s visual evidence that was made available to the public. As I understand, the NFL initially didn’t have the same reaction to this situation, as it occurred several months ago, and no one really seemed to care too much about it then. After all, a domestic dispute could be mutual–hell, the guy could even be completely innocent–and she defended him. So there really wasn’t much reason for anyone to get outraged when it happened.
The big thing here is this video was released by TMZ to the public and the public had a huge negative reaction to it. Sure, she hit him, but he straight up decked her and she was out cold, and his response was pretty indifferent. That video is bound to get a huge negative response, regardless of whether it was Ray Rice or some random guy the internet would have raked him over the coals. But that’s what made this a unique case, it’s not often there’s that kind of evidence that gets so much public reaction to a public figure. I think if a similar public figure from another industry were caught in the same sort of video, we’d probably see him getting canned too. Hell, I’ve seen blurbs here and there about athletes or shows losing sponsors over tweets or FB posts.
Oh, plenty of us are outraged. I’m also outraged Jerrod Mustaf and Ray Lewis aren’t doing hard time for murder, that Kobe isn’t doing time for rape, and Jason Kidd wasn’t arrested for domestic violence.
But what should I do? Start a pit thread? Like that’ll do anything. I have no pull with the relevant prosecutors.
There’s only so much room for outrage that you can’t do anything about.
There was outrage before the video was available, once Rice’s suspension turned out to be just two games. That was due at least in part to the fact that Josh Gordon had just received a full year ban for a failed drug test (admittedly, it was at least his third substance of abuse policy violation).