The NFL's Image Problem.

It's been increasingly difficult to avoid discussing the string of recent incidents contributing to the NFL's image problem. No big secret, it's been a rough start to the new season. With there already being four high-profile domestic violence cases (with former Ravens' running back Ray Rice being the only one to really suffer consequences), and one extremely troubling case of what amounts to child abuse, really, from one of the league's premier players who also happens to be the face of a franchise.

To be somewhat fair, the Rice situation is a bit different from the Greg Hardy (Panthers) situation and the Ray McDonald (49ers) situation.. When news broke out way back in February that Rice had punched his fiancee in the face so hard that she was knocked unconscious, it was already an abhorrent scenario. Yet both the Ravens organization and the NFL were reluctant to do anything. As more was revealed about the case, commissioner Roger Goodell slapped him with a measly two game suspension. This, of course, sparked the joke that in the NFL, hitting a joint was worse than hitting your fiancee (as this situation was happening at the same time as Browns' receiver Josh Gordon was facing a year-long suspension for drug abuse after having been found out to have smoke marijuana for the third time in his career).

Already though, this is a league where smoking pot three times is worse than knocking your fiancee out cold. The priorities of the league already appear messed up. There was great public outcry at the weak suspension to begin with, but things only got worse when the video tape of the incident was released. If you haven't seen it, you should look it up. Apart from the fact that Rice just straight up cold-cocks his fiancee; he also seems extremely cavalier about her unconscious body. I don't want to comment on whether this sort of thing has happened before between them, or what. I don't know. Most people reporting on the matter don't. Still, perhaps the most disturbing part of the video is that he just goes on trying to drag her unconscious body out of the elevator like it were an annoying inconvenience.

That's when the shit storm got really intense. The Ravens cut Rice. Taking a page from the Patriots in the Hernandez fiasco, the Ravens even offered a jersey exchange for fans (although I'm curious how many exchanged their Ray Rice jerseys for Terrell Suggs jerseys - another Ravens player to have a couple counts of domestic violence under his belt).  The league suspended Rice indefinitely (but as always, left a door open for his possible return). Both the NFL and Ravens organization created an excuse for having not been more serious with this: both claimed they hadn't seen the video.

Well, apart from the fact that later, there are reports that that isn't actually true and that law enforcement officials had actually sent the tape to the NFL so odds are, someone in the league offices saw it,  the fact remains that the video tape ultimately changed nothing. The facts we already knew were merely confirmed, but nothing changed. We already knew that Rice punched his fiancee. We already knew that he knocked her out. And we already knew that he tried to drag her out of the elevator before running into other people. These were the facts we already knew. What did the video change? We had known this exact situation had transpired months earlier. Yet now they're trying to cover their asses.

Fact is, the NFL never took this situation seriously.

But now the NFL realizes that maybe this does matter a bit. The sad fact is, the only reason the Panthers deactivated Greg Hardy and the only reason the Vikings deactivated Adrian Peterson was because of the Ray Rice fallout. It's quite simple. No video, no problem. Shit. The 49ers didn't even bother to deactivate Ray McDonald for their prime time implosion. But already, Peterson is confirmed for the next game. McDonald never faced deactivation to begin with. And as much as I want to believe that my NFC team - the Panthers - will do the right thing, it's hard to imagine Hardy sitting out too much longer. And let's also not ignore that Peterson and Hardy were not actually suspended. They were merely deactivated. That is such a huge fundamental difference.

The league has spent a lot of time and a lot of money trying to draw in a female fanbase, and it's been more successful than pretty much every major sports league in the country. Yet they've done very little to show that they actually take domestic violence seriously.

The Peterson story isn't much better. Instead of punching his wife, he merely beat up his children with a stick, causing some pretty bad injuries. He's been indicted with negligence and reckless endangerment, but it's a text book case of child abuse. The saddest part of both stories is that all of these players have their supporters and defenders. I try not to give the internet credence, but there are people who honestly believe Rice acted in self-defense! (For the record, that's extremely fucked up.)  Peterson has an even greater defense: it's his right to discipline his children how he sees fit. After all, Peterson himself had received similar discipline. Generally, the people who hit their kids are the people who were hit as kids too. It makes sense. Yet when you look at the pictures (again, you can look them up online), it's disgusting. Disciplining your kids doesn't mean you can hurt them however badly you want. Even worse is that he's got such outspoken defenders. Charles Barkley went so far as to say that all black parents whip their kids, and that under those circumstances, every black parent is going to jail. (Are these the role models for the black community these days? I don't want to sound ignorant, but, how is this ok? Were I black, I'd be super pissed at these comments. They don't reflect "black culture" - whatever that really means anyway - very kindly.)

Not to get all political and all, but both situations, as messed up as they are, both rely on one fundamental situation: these players have the power, and they generally get away with it because they're abusing people without it. All this talk about "due process," is fine and dandy, but just take a moment to consider what exactly that means. The law is actually on the side of the abuser. Innocent until proven guilty, but these are situations that largely build off of hearsay and "character." And these popular, wealthy NFL players are naturally going to get the benefit of the doubt. (Although, the video tape removes the benefit from Rice, but strangely, people haven't removed the benefit of the doubt from Peterson, who also has photographic evidence proving his abuses.) Either way, the victims are fairly powerless in every capacity.

What's even more messed up is that Ben Roethlisberger got suspended for six games for personal conduct violations in regards to sexual harassment case that actually did have a bit of a muddled story.  Nothing was ever definitive about those situations, yet Goodell suspended him for six games. Rice punches his fiancee and knocks her out  and they give him a two game suspension. Then the whole Hardy, Peterson, and McDonald situations, and they don't even get a one-game suspension!

The key to the lack of suspensions in the Hardy, Peterson, and McDonald cases is that whole "due process" thing. And while Roethlisberger sounded like a total sleazeball back in the day (he's one of those guys who seems to have turned it around, which is always nice to see), he wasn't afforded that luxury. Yet somehow when it comes to enacting real violence on another person - woman or child - the league suddenly cares about "due process." When it comes to even more horrendous crimes, the league wants to wait and see. Let the courts figure it out. Of course, the NFL has nothing to do with the inherent flaws in the legal system that tend to create a hostile environment for victims of domestic violence (to the point that many women and men don't report it when it happens). And that just leaves an even more bitter taste in the mouth.

Perhaps the worst part of it all is that this isn't anything new. This is a league that wouldn't suspend Ray Lewis (who even went on to become the NFL MVP.) This is the league that suspended Michael Vick indefinitely a day after his arrest, then allowed his prison time to serve as his league suspension (in all, Vick's NFL suspension was two games - hey! Killing dogs is just as bad as knocking your fiancee unconscious!) This is a league that gave an "indefinite" (but six game) suspension to Adam "Pacman" Jones for his involvement in a night club shooting (but didn't suspend Ray Lewis for his involvement in a stabbing), then let him back in the league where he still somehow gets work. Even Donte Stallworth kept finding work after a year long suspension for a DUI manslaughter charge. (To his credit, Stallworth is one of the few NFL players to get into legal trouble and fully accept responsibility for his actions.) Ray Rice wasn't even the only Ravens player on the Ravens roster to be charged with domestic violence! Terrell Suggs punched and dragged his girlfriend years earlier. Suspension? Nope. And he did it multiple times, and did some crazy things (like poured bleach on her and her son and kicked her in the nose).  Brandon Marshall of the Bears also has a bit of a history (and it's kind of crazy - I actually really like Marshall and I do think he's one of those players who's kind of turned it around, but it is hard to get over his earlier years).

The league cares more about substance abuse than violence, as evident by Gordon's season long suspension for marijuana, Colts' owner Jim Irsay's six game suspension for drugs and a DUI, Wes Welker's  four game suspension for amphetamines, and Matt Prater's four game suspension for alcohol issues. But even as a sports league, the NFL is somehow above PED controversy. Brian Cushing (Texans) was suspended years ago for PEDs and was a top candidate for defensive rookie of the year that same season. Shawn Merriman (former Charger) was caught as well and finished third in Defensive Player of the Year voting. NFL fans not only give zero shits about the players beating up women and children; they don't care about the players cheating (unless it's the Patriots, who didn't actually "cheat"). Frankly, it's astonishing that the NFL doesn't get the kind of flack that Major League Baseball does. Half of Seattle's roster in the past few years have face some kind of suspension for PEDs. They win the championship and no one says anything about it. Dick Sherman even escaped his PED suspension on a legal technicality (and not that he didn't actually do it).

Still, when it comes to domestic violence, there's a whole myriad of issues at hand. Stats won't tell the whole story. On the one hand, the percentage of NFL players arrested for domestic violence is much smaller than the overall national average of that age bracket. On the other hand, conviction rates for professional athletes is about half that of the national average. We can interpret this on the surface as, hey, the NFL doesn't have a domestic violence problem, and even if it looks like they do, they're probably innocent. This, of course, fails to take into consideration that many of these cases are determined by juries (and it's hard to imagine in this day and age a celebrity athlete like Adrian Peterson having a completely fair trial). The rates might also be deceptive because reporting domestic violence caused by a celebrity athlete is inevitably going to show up in the public eye, and those women are going to be scrutinized even more harshly by even more people. There will be news cameras and talking heads on television calling her character into question. (See Big Ben cases.) If there's already little security provided in the normal world, where it's suspected that most domestic violence cases never get reported to begin with, it stands to reason that when committed by a celebrity, it's even less safe.

But at the end of the day, it's the NFL. It's one of the most successful businesses ever! It's in the public eye. Children look up to their players. And it seems we're all ok with thugs, wife beaters, and child abusers so long as they can run really fast and hold onto the football. Personally, I'm having a hard time keeping focus on the good guys like DeAngelo Williams, who recently dyed tips of his dreads pink in honor of his mother who passed from breast cancer and played a big role in the NFL's embracing of the Breast Cancer Awareness cause.

It's a situation where sure, an overwhelming majority of NFL players aren't criminals. This is obviously true. The problem is, there shouldn't be any child abusers, wife beaters, dog killers, and murder accomplices in the NFL. All this recent activity really makes the Patriots' handling of Aaron Hernandez seem like the best and most ideal way they could. Triple murder is perhaps more of a black and white issue than anything else, but Robert Kraft - when he heard of the investigation - said that he would release Hernandez if he were charged with as much as obstruction of justice (perhaps learning from the Ray Lewis situation over a decade earlier). When the story broke that he was charged of murder, the Patriots cut him without hesitation, told him to stay away from the premises, and offered jersey exchanges for fans who had his jersey.

It's a shame that more sports organizations don't put real life above football more readily. And it's really starting to kill the NFL buzz. For me, it's getting a bit more difficult to really get into this season.

Let's not forget in all this due process talk though, Ray Rice knocked out his fiancee in front of a security camera. He coldly tried to drag her out of the elevator. The NFL may or may not have seen the tape (but probably did). And Ray Rice pleaded not motherfucking guilty.