Part II: The other side: NFL drama obscures the good guys
NFL Commissioner Roger Goddell is a ghost, a man who has dissipated in thin air, dodging the critical mass of negative publicity over the league’s recent rash of high-profile player arrests and incidents of domestic violence.
The irony of his disappearing act is that Goddell has successfully cultivated an image of being a super cop, a zero-tolerance enforcer of league rules and potential knocks to the brand’s image. It’s been about putting his stamp and a protective covering on a league that makes an estimated $6 billion in revenue a year through sponsorships, advertising, TV and radio contracts, licensing and, lastly, actual attendance.
This wave of backlash has to be particularly troubling for a league that has set a goal of achieving $25 billion in annual revenue by 2027 as corporate benefactors revolt against Goddell, threatening to pull their sponsorships and advertising dollars. Some financial columnists believe it will be the advertisers that force a cultural shift on the NFL, not league brass or feigned attempts at sincerity by team owners.
In the last week, Raven Ray Rice has been replaced by Viking Adrian Peterson as the whipping boy du jour, the symptom of a larger sickness afflicting professional sports and the NFL specifically. Justifiably so, they do speak to a cultural problem in sports, the playground of many manchildren who often deal with situations and emotions through what they know — violent and aggressive behavior.
But the second part to the NFL’s story is not being told: hidden among the wife beaters and child abusers, the good guys are becoming collateral damage.
The league as a whole has been MIA in helping to highlight the do-gooders held as prisoners in a war on professional athletes. Who is coming to the defense of the individual players, the men whose works off the field provide a better way of the life for members of their respective communities and the causes they champion?
Not Goddell. Not the NFL.
That job has been left to the players themselves, put on the defensive to distance themselves from the Ray Rices, the Adrian Petersons, and just Thursday, Arizona Cardinal Jonathan Dwyer, the latest player to be arrested on allegations of domestic violence.
As convenient and easy as a target as the game has become, there is still much to admire about the NFL. It’s flat-out fun, inspiring, and among the meatheads and the bad guys, there are real heroes to root for each game, physical specimens doing amazing feats of strength and skill, but then using their influence, talents and riches to give back.
In the scheme of things, the numbers of player foundations in the NFL, the personal donated dollars from the athletes themselves and the money and awareness raised through their charitable events, far outpace the number of arrests we see in the NFL. Like anything, there are foundations established simply to make people look good, but far more actually do good.
Close to home, longtime Charger fans can look toward retired legend LaDainian Tomlinson, for instance, as a guy who was universally described as one of the good ones, a man whose foundation and pursuits put food on the tables of many poverty-stricken San Diegans and gave to those in his native Texas.
Former Charger quarterback Drew Brees became an inspiration to the city of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, becoming an active participant in the rebuilding process and even buying his home in the historic St. Charles area of the city, not all that far from some of the most ravaged communities.
Neither of these examples come with rap sheets, not so much as a controversial parking ticket that has been publicized. The point is, they are among the vast majority of the 1,700 or so players actively working in the league every season.
Similar stories can be shared with the public every day, and it’s the players that are doing that through their deeds and actions. In recent days, Steelers defensive end Brett Keisel, he of the epic beard-mustache combo, has been one of the more vocal defenders of the good guys. And he’s right.
While many media reports are talking about the 730 arrests and serious citations issued against NFL players since 2000, that number uses shock over comparative substance. In 2011, there were 147 million adult males in the United States and 9 million arrests (around 6 percent) vs. an average annual NFL player roster of 1,700 with an average of 52 arrests per year since 2000 (about 3 percent). If suspensions and other league-only infractions are taken into account, it’s probably going to be a push in terms of football baddies as a microcosm of society.
In any case, the NFL has a serious problem, and that problem is the league and its level of responsibility and the speed and authenticity of its response, not the players themselves, at least not most of them.
This column first appeared in the Imperial Valley Press, Sept. 19, 2014.