Never seen anything like this. Ever. Have you?
The last week has been as unsavory of a week for sports fans as I can remember. Not since the OJ trial has SportsCenter felt this much like Court TV— and nobody seems to be immune to it.
Fans were just starting to get the nauseating taste of the Donald Sterling story out of their mouths before Ray Rice came back to dominate the news cycle. The incredibly disturbing video of him swinging on his then fiancée (twice), dropping her to the floor of an elevator and causing her to hit her head on the railing sent all media — social and traditional — reeling.
As horrific of an event as this was for the NFL (and of course Janay Palmer and the Rice family, but we’ll stick to sports for the purposes of this piece, as much as we can anyway) the fallout was even more crippling. Commissioner Roger Goodell and the NFL’s management of the Rice incident has revealed a startling and sobering truth: either Goodell has lied repeatedly about his (mis)handling of Ray Rice and his knowledge of the story prior to leveling his haphazard punishment, or there’s an appalling epidemic of incompetence going on in the NFL offices.
Rice of course was suspended indefinitely by the league and later terminated by the Baltimore Ravens after the tape of the altercation was leaked, despite the fact that less than two weeks ago the league instituted a new automatic six-game ban for first-time domestic violence offenders which would not apply to Rice, who had already received a two-game suspension.
Sidebar: To make matters worse, pretty much anybody who has touched the Rice story has been engulfed with criticism. Floyd Mayweather and Paul George found out the hard way this week.
The domestic violence narrative within the NFL doesn’t begin and end with Ray Rice. Two other players are currently embattled in domestic violence cases, both of whom (unlike Rice) have not only yet to be suspended, but could be on the field this weekend! San Fransisco 49ers defensive lineman Ray McDonald was locked up on suspicion of domestic violence on August 31st, but was released and has yet to be formally charged. Carolina Panthers defensive end Greg Hardy, however, was not only charged with the crime, he was convicted back on July 16th!
RAY RICE wasn’t even been convicted of a crime! His case was thrown out after he agreed to attend court-supervised counseling, and Rice has lost everything but his freedom! Hardy is still playing!
Not to be outdone, the NBA returned to TMZ’s homepage after Atlanta Hawks GM Danny Ferry took an indefinite leave of absence after making inflammatory remarks regarding South Sudanese player Luol Deng saying, “He’s got a little African in him.” Ferry elaborated by insinuating that Deng is a good guy to your face, but a shit-starter behind closed doors.
No es bueno.
Sidebar: It appears as though Ferry was reading this from a scouting report and that these were not his own thoughts. Either way, he sounded fairly comfortable relaying it out loud on a conference call.
This story was linked to one broke last week regarding a race based email sent from Hawks owner Bruce Levenson that resulted in Levenson voluntarily selling his controlling interest in the team. And to think, Adam Silver probably thought this commissioner gig was all tailored suits and draft picks.
Major League Baseball then chimed in late yesterday with the 25 game suspension of Baltimore Orioles slugger Chris “Crush” Davis for amphetamine usage. The first baseman was batting a putrid .197 this season, but he’s still managed to pop 26 homers, while driving in 72 RBI. This, coming on the heels of his orca big 2013 season of 53 home runs and 138 RBI. The O’s have the second-best record in the bigs right now, and this Davis suspension could certainly serve as a distraction for a team with World Series aspirations.
In the blink of an eye, Pistorius went from “Olympic hero” to “defendant”.
From the world of track and field, former Olympic hero Oscar Pistorius awaited his fate in a court of law after shooting and killing his girlfriend last year, whom he allegedly thought was an intruder. You may remember Pistorius from the 2012 Summer Olympics— he became the first double leg amputee to participate in the Olympics when he entered the men’s 400 meters and 4 × 400 meters relay races. The South African sprinter was found not guilty of murder, but was found guilty of culpable homicide, which should carry a less harsh penalty.
But of course, this is America. And in America, we care about football first and foremost. It ranks right up there with fireworks, guns and gluttony. So naturally, the NFL bookends the week with the stunning news of former NFL MVP Adrian Peterson being indicted, and later arrested, on child abuse charges in Texas stemming from injuries his son sustained after AD allegedly hit him with a switch. The severity of the injuries and the story itself are not fully known as of yet, but the Minnesota Vikings have deactivated Peterson and his return to action anytime soon is very much in doubt. Given the magnitude of the athlete, the fact that a child is involved, and Peterson’s history with his own children suffering at the hands of an abusive adult, this story has the potential to make the Ray Rice story look like “The Big Finish” on PTI.
On Friday, the NFL and The NFL Players Association also rewrote, voted on and instituted a new drug policy which will include HGH (Human-Growth Hormone) testing, while also raising the punishable limits for other drugs, such as marijuana and amphetamines. These changes have resulted in reduced suspensions for many players whose positive tests had violated the old policy, but are now being retroactively applied to the new standards (high-profile players such as Josh Gordon and Wes Welker are among the notable lucky bastards).
Exhale…
Okay, so what can we take away from all this?
For starters, the hypocrisy of the NFL has been nothing short of unconscionable. How the league can rewrite new drug policies, thus negating its old punishments, while implementing a new domestic violence policy only to undermine it a week later is baffling. As powerful as it may be, the NFL is not a time machine. You cannot go back and amend the rules, erase old ones and ignore new ones each time a new piece of information trickles out that you should’ve gathered before making your initial decision, but didn’t.
America’s gold standard of sports leagues has never looked so dysfunctional— at least not this publicly. There’s no consistency, no accountability and no leadership. And the litigious nature of this country mixed with 24-hour streaming news coverage won’t allow any of these stories to die anytime soon. He’s made plenty of mistakes during his reign as commissioner, but it’s hard to envision Roger Goodell keeping his job once the dust settles.
Sidebar: And now all the players that Goodell has laid the smack down on over the years are coming out of the woodwork to take a verbal swing at him. James Harrison and Jonathan Vilma have been waiting years for this!
Ray Rice and his wife’s united stance is an interesting wrinkle in this story.
Second, it’s never acceptable for a man to lay his hands on a woman. And if you’re an athlete or a public figure, and you want to raise the issue of the lack of mutual accountability that does factor into some domestic violence cases, you’re better off keeping your yap AND your twitter shut, lest you be hit with a barrage of condemnation (fairly or unfairly), resulting in the now ever-so ubiquitous public apology. And if you plan on rolling those dice, you’d better make sure your comments are extremely measured.
We should also learn from this week that free speech can actually be very costly, and privacy is almost all but a thing of the past in 2014. Some may classify what we experience today as hyper-sensitivity, but more often than not, that notion is erroneous (cough, Mike Ditka, cough). This country is supposed to be a land of inclusion and fairness— clearly though, all people are not treated with the same levels of respect and dignity. Our professional athletes and the men and women working behind the scenes in pro sports (owners, coaches, GMs, governing bodies, commissioners, etc.) are a lucky few who are paid handsomely for work that tens of thousands would do for far less. It’s not at all unreasonable to expect them to exercise better judgment, especially when dealing with matters of respect and dignity. An added layer of expectation should be placed on the non-athletes outlined above, because they are typically 40-years of age or older, and have ascended to the top ranks of their industry ostensibly through the use of their brain, rather than (or in addition to) their athletic prowess.
I know from firsthand experience how difficult it can bet to get and keep a job in pro sports. If our “best and brightest” can’t even do their jobs without tossing in a racially intensive remark or taking something like domestic violence seriously, what are we to do? The NFL has quickly and tragically evolved into one PR nightmare after another; pretty soon they’ll be broadcasting NFL Network live from Rikers Island.
The most bizarre week in sports since OJ…and Saturday night hasn’t even hit yet! Who knows what might go down after this Floyd Mayweather/Marcos Maidana fight in Vegas.
Whatever. Just throw another log on this dumpster fire of a sports week. If nothing else, it will probably make a pretty damn good 30 For 30 someday.