We don’t have a football problem. We have a moral problem.
A generation of men that doesn’t have the remotest suspicion how to be real men. Society that has pegged “disrespect” as the ultimate insult, without recognizing that respect is earned. Culture that has desensitized us to violence and the objectification of women, even as it has paid lip service to the certainty that both are wrong.
Football only reflects America, and America is badly broken.
Roger Goodell and the National Football League are pilloried at ever-increasing volume, and rightfully so, for their habitual employment of scofflaws, scalawags and felons-in-waiting.
The media and the court of public opinion have slammed down their gavels with authority in the past week. Reaction to the league’s almost daily presence in the police blotter is swift and unequivocal, and rightfully so. Rigid on misuse of recreational drugs but soft on punching your significant other in the face or allegedly bloodying your child with a stick is not a progressive policy in any sense of the word.
But we live in a day of opportunists, pat answers and Band-Aid solutions, and the people who habitually spout that foolishness appear to feel as if they have died and ascended to glory in recent days.
I’ve heard proclamations that football is a “violent game,” and that its “grossly overpaid” practitioners don’t know how to flick the switch when the cheering stops and it’s time to function in polite company between Sundays.
Stop it. Just please, stop.
In any given week, more than 1,600 men are actively employed on an NFL roster. Even if in an average seven-day period, one player is flagged by authorities for traveling with contraband in his glove department and another is accused in a domestic dispute, is that a significantly higher crime rate than the world in which the rest of us live and work? Absolutely not.
The differences, of course, are obvious. When the chorus condemning the NFL and its perceived image problem is at full song, there are issues involved that have nothing to do with the presumed perpetrators. Our own biases based on money, social class, and sadly even race come into play.
Crime that takes place on our streets, in our schools, perhaps even in our government, stays far from our radar screen. We keep it out of sight, out of mind. Perhaps the details appeared beneath the fold on a day when we didn’t happen to see the printed copy of the newspaper.
Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson and Greg Hardy, on the other hand, have been in perpetual rotation on the 24-hour news cycle because of their station in life. It’s easier to direct our righteous anger against them, particularly if we don’t worship at the First Church of the Gridiron every Sunday.
What I rarely see, however, is America directing the same zero-tolerance policy at other entertainers who mess up badly, even though in many cases their bank accounts are astronomically higher than athletes. We seem less inclined to turn the discussion of good-versus-evil into a game of one-pitch softball when it comes to actors or musicians. I hope the reason for that is nothing more insidious than the fact that we don’t see them getting paid to engage in sanctioned hitting for three hours every Sunday.
Of course pro football has major behavioral issues, but in our demand for quick fixes and immediate satisfaction, we ignore the real reasons for it.
The game doesn’t attract “naturally violent” people, whatever the hell that means. It does, perhaps, appeal to an element that is seeing some heavy-duty stuff as children and is seeking a way out.
Poverty. Fatherlessness. Gang violence. When you grow up desperately seeking direction, and when a coach, a teacher or 10,000 adults laud you for your talent on a well-lighted patch of green once a week, by golly, you’re going to grab that golden ticket with both hands.
If football is the only source of stability that a young man grows up knowing, that isn’t the fault of football. The game hasn’t failed. We have. Our country and our civic and social leaders have.
It should be common sense that you never strike a woman; never beat a child; never drive while intoxicated at double or triple the legal limit; never go to a nightclub if you don’t feel safe without carrying a handgun in your sweatpants; never kill.
When athletes don’t comprehend those basic truths, it isn’t shame on football. It’s shame on us.
Where I live, we don’t have a perfect record, but we do pretty well. I’ve watched sports — particularly football — used appropriately and effectively as a tool to keep struggling boys (and girls) engaged in school.
I’ve met young people for whom I’m confident football might have been have been the only reason they stuck it out in high school or went to college. And when I see them 10 and 20 years later with productive lives, stable careers and great families, this entire arm of the educational process is made worth it.
Sadly, those stories — and thousands like them across the fruited plain — don’t make for titillating TMZ fodder or exhaustive ESPN chatter.
You’re still alarmed and angry?
Great. You should be. Instead of insisting that Roger Goodell clean up football, though, demand that we clean up our country and our world. Treat the disease, not the symptoms.
Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. His email is koakes@sunjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Oaksie72.
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