Baseball is not perfect. From the crooked Black Sox, to Cap Anson’s refusal to play with black players, to Ty Cobb maybe being a murderer, to the drunk drivers, to the widespread steroid use, it has a fairly checkered past. It treats its future employees like garbage (it uses its incredible leverage and willing replacements to drive wages to ridiculous lows), though that’s a MLBPA issue just as much as the MLB, and unfairly punishes players for transgressions as innocuous as marijuana use. We can all agree that Major League Baseball has done plenty wrong over the years.
And yet, they could come out today with a press release that simply stated that Hitler had some good ideas, and it would be only the 3rd most despicable thing in the news cycle right now. I almost can’t decide what is a more insanely evil idea: allowing a wife-beater to stay employed in your league while lying about seeing video evidence to that exact effect, or using THAT resulting shit-storm to reduce the suspension one school received for systematically covering up a DECADES LONG CHILD RAPE SCANDAL.
A not-so-small aside:
Football is an extremely, extremely dangerous sport. I would not let my children play organized football in its current state because not only am I not reasonably sure they would be safe; in fact, I am reasonably sure they would be very unsafe. Chronic Trauma Encephalopathy (which I spelled correctly without looking on the first try. Jealous?) is almost certainly linked with contact sports such as football (it is difficult to say definitely, as CTE is diagnosed postmortem). It’s hard to countenance a sport that is inherently dangerous to its participants, and the NFL has not only shown an unwillingness to accept this hazard and work to eliminate or reduce it, but they have actively litigated and acted against those who bring this information up. I’m not alone in my refusal to allow my children to start playing football; Pop Warner saw participation drop nearly 10 percent in 3 years from 2010 to 2012.
Let’s next try to reconcile that while the NFL’s sport is by far the most dangerous of the Big 3 sports, their employees are absolutely the worst represented. As a point of comparison, let’s take baseball. In the MLB, every contract a player signs is guaranteed. If a player signs a 3-year, $42 million pact, he could injure his arm the next day and be assured that he will still be paid his $42 million. The same is true in the NBA – with rare exceptions more-or-less clearly stated in the CBA, what you sign for is what you get.
In the NFL, that’s not at all true. You can sign a 5-year, $120 million dollar deal and end up with $42 million or so. They do not have guaranteed contracts, so a team can release them and only pay them a portion (usually a very, very small portion) of their “contract” value. This also gives a team leverage to re-negotiate in their favor essentially whenever they want. Did you sign a 3-year, $12 million pact with just $4 million guaranteed? Well, your GM can tell you they’ll release you if you don’t re-negotiate to 3-years, $7 million. There is no competition for the NFL; you must bargain in good faith but they themselves have no obligation to do so.
The players in the NFL also make comparatively little in comparison to the other two leagues. Tom Brady and Peyton Manning are two of the 3 or 4 best players of the last 20 years. Combined (and in non-guaranteed money, let’s note), they make less than Alex Rodriguez (also one of the best players of the last 20 years) will in his career. Football is much, much more profitable than MLB, but the players take home much, much less than the other sports.
Average salary per player in the 4 major American Sports:
NBA: $5.2 million
MLB: $3.2 million
NHL: $2.4 million
NFL: $1.9 million
To be fair to the NFL, they do have more players on their roster for that money to be split between. We can re-make that list by multiplying the rate statistic with the counting one:
NBA: $5.2 million * 13 players = $67.6 million
MLB: $3.2 million * 25 players = $80 million
NHL: $2.4 million * 23 players = $55.2 million
NFL: $1.9 million * 53 players = $100.7 million
Two rebuttals to this. First, players don’t care how much are spent on the team. They care what is spent on them. It doesn’t much matter to Elvis Dumervil (in 2013) that the rest of his team adds up to more than the average NBA squad. It matters to him that being among the best DL in the NFL results in Denver saying that the $12 million salary both parties agreed to in 2010 is too high. A player can hold out if they want to renegotiate his contract. A team can just release you without paying you what they said they would. Second, the average NFL lifespan is miniscule. The league chews you up and spits you out. An average baseball career is 5.6 years; the average NFL career is just 3.5.
Moral of this aside; the NFL already pays its players less than the other major sports, even though they make more. Those players play shorter periods of time, almost entirely due to the fact that the sport is extremely dangerous. Players who retire have a great chance to have long-lasting disabilities; the NFL will deny this and litigate to protect itself from paying you afterwards.
Back to today’s shitshow. It’s common knowledge that Ray Rice beat his then-fiance in a casino elevator. We’ve all seen (or had the ability to see) Rice carry his unconscious wife-to-be away, and heard a rough sequence of events of what transpired. The league wrung its hands for awhile, and eventually issued a 2-game suspension for the misdeed. My brother on the subject:
The NFL rules on Molly: 4 game suspension for taking it. 2 game suspension for assaulting her. #IStandWithWes
— Elliott Handley (@ElliottHandley) September 3, 2014
In the eyes of the NFL, it was twice as bad that a player took MDMA then it was that a player beat his fiance. Josh Gordon is spending this season selling cars because he likes weed a little too much (to be fair, all major sports organizations unfairly criminalize recreational drug use).
Confession time: I silently, tacitly agreed with the NFL when the suspension came out. There was a narrative that existed that could indicate that Ray Rice really was defending himself. The NFL claimed it had access to the actual video inside the elevator (which the police had and the public did not). The police originally charged them both, which indicated that at least at the time both parties were at least partially at fault. There is no reason to ever hit a woman, but there’s no reason to ever hit a man either, is there? Spousal abuse is a terrible, terrible thing, but it’s terrible both ways. It is emasculating for men to report domestic abuse for a variety of reasons. The majority of spousal abuse is male against female, but women abuse men too. Janay Rice (nee Palmer) had allegedly met with Roger Goodell and was sorry for her role in the incident.
This is what I imagined happened:
Ray and Janay were arguing in a casino. Janay eventually attacked Ray in an elevator, and a physical confrontation occured. Since Ray is an NFL running back and Janay is not, Ray knocked her unconscious. While this is absolutely an awful thing to do, it’s hard to say that I wouldn’t sympathize in the heat of the moment. I’ve never been attacked by anyone, but it’s not a leap for me to imagine overreacting to someone attacking me, even if it is someone who might not really pose an imminent threat. Ray’s a strong man, and it’s not unrealistic to assume that he could have knocked her out with a single punch in some defense-gone-wrong deal. After the initial fight, cooler heads prevailed, and they worked things out in the manner that we all know afterwards. I was in the extreme minority in my belief here, but it made sense to me. How could the NFL be not just evil, but stupid? They chose the worst possible path forward, so I reasoned there had to be a reason for it.
Now, I feel foolish. This is not what happened; what happened is that the NFL shoveled us a big ole’ pile of shit. There is no way to interpret what Ray Rice did in that elevator as “self-defense.” He should be arrested and jailed. I can’t imagine how a prosecutor who had access to that video tape could choose not to file charges. The only thing more despicable than what the NFL did in levying such a weak suspension is what Ray Rice actually did to Janay Rice.
The NFL had intimated they had seen everything there was to see in the Rice investigation; several reporters went on record to that effect. Now, they claim they had never seen the video until TMZ bought it from a hotel employee (now it’s on Deadspin: everyone who wants to check out a third-degree felony can now do so). This means the NFL is guilty of one of two things; staggering, unacceptable incompetence or staggering, unacceptable deception. In either case, Roger Goodell should resign.
The NCAA decided that this would be just about the best day ever to announce that they are walking back Penn State’s penalties for its role in the worst scandal in the history of sports.
It’s a sick sort of Morton’s fork, choosing between spousal abuse and child rape, but it’s really no contest. There is no greater crime than the rape of a child, and I posit to you that I couldn’t even imagine a worse thing. Penn State and the men it bought and paid for are all either in prison or will be someday, and the Freeh report left no doubt that Penn State was well aware of the sickening cover-up that went on for decades. Jerry Sandusky raped several young children (the sick fuck put out a book called Touched. Seriously.) during his tenure at “Happy Valley,” and not only did several coaches/executives know about it, they took an active hand in protecting him from justice. In my opinion, it was a crime serious enough to disband the college’s football program entirely. Playing in the NCAA should be a privilege, not a right, and one its members committed the greatest crime imaginable AND THEN COVERED IT UP FOR 3 DECADES. Instead, the NCAA levied a penalty less severe than the SMU “death penalty,” which was for paying players that make their respective college money. SMU had a season cancelled, and dropped the season afterwards. Penn State vacated wins (doesn’t count as a penalty because no one cares), forfeited bowl games for 4 years (no one cares; half of FBS teams miss postseason play each year and PSU wasn’t competing for a national title), and 40 scholarship reductions over 4 years (which, sure, is a penalty, but not really much of one).
They also fined PSU $60 million dollars, which is a cost they will just pass on to their boosters and students, so let’s forget about that one straightaway. The NCAA gave the most vile crime possible essentially a loss of their 10 worst players and a bowl ban for 4 years…and then today they lifted the bowl ban effective immediately. Each of Sandusky’s 45 victims was worth around $1.3 million dollars, 8/9ths of a scholarship, and 1/23rd of a bowl game in the end.
The NCAA couldn’t care less about college sports, or integrity, or even basic human rights. All they care about is getting as much money as they can, as quickly as they can. What fathomable reason exists such that lifting this bowl ban is a good idea? Did Sandusky’s victims recant? Was Graham Spanier found innocent of his charges? What has changed to make this a good idea? Could it be, and this is just speculation, that the NCAA never actually intended to suspend PSU for this long but had to wait until the PR hit wore off?
Both the NFL and the NCAA are despicable organizations. I’m not sure if Mark Emmert is a more terrible person than Roger Goodell, but it seems impossible that he can’t be. In Roger Goodell’s case, there is either willful negligence of the facts available or malicious intent to suppress the information. In Mark Emmert’s case, there is just naked greed and evil. Both of these guys can go fuck off.