I live in Pittsburgh, Pa. It’s a football town. As a resident here, I am required by law to worship the Pittsburgh Steelers, forsaking all other gods before them. Football is a religion here. Do you understand the level of sacrilegious gumption it takes for a city to pronounce a football play as “immaculate” and continue to celebrate it as a miracle 42 years later? If you’ve ever wondered how important football is to this city, try flying into the Pittsburgh International Airport someday. When you get off of the plane, the first thing you will see are two statues of our greatest residents. George Washington (the first president of this country, who basically invented this city by founding Fort Duquesne, a camp that eventually blossomed into what is now Pittsburgh) and Franco Harris, the man who caught the Immaculate Reception. Franco’s statue comes first. And I have absolutely no problem with this. In fact, I love that statue
So I’m not football bashing at all.
Ray Rice is a deplorable human being. Like everyone else, I have watched the video footage and found it appalling. He deserves to be locked away for a good long time. I’d be perfectly ok with some good old fashioned playground justice here, where Janay Palmer’s father or brother or cousin or whatever beats the ever living crap out of Rice on the playground and is just sort of given a pass, legally, because we as a society have collectively decided that the man is deserving of a good quality ass-whooping. I’m kind of old skool like that. So I’m not defending Rice.
Janay Palmer has every right to stay with, forgive and marry Ray Rice. She has every right to not press charges. I don’t care if she loves him or is a gold digger. Maybe it really was an isolated incident. Maybe she has battered woman’s syndrome. But she’s an adult, and she was the one who was knocked out. If she chooses to forgive the incident, that’s her business. I think it’s sad. I think it’s tragic. I think there’s a very real chance that we’re going to see her in the news again someday soon, beat th a bloody pulp or dead. But that’s her right.
Personally, I don’t for a second believe that Roger Goodell was not aware of the second video tape. And I’m in general consensus with the rest of the world (as far as I can tell) in saying “honestly, who the fuck cares about the second tape? Wasn’t the first one bad enough?” So I’m not defending him either. In fact, fuck Roger Goodell (and if someone wants to go sucker punch the smarmy look off of his face on general principle, I’m ok with that too).
But now that we’ve gotten this out of the way, can we please stop enabling these people by pretending to be surprised when something like this happens? Hines Ward (who, by the way, i completely adore… because, as mentioned before, I’m from Pittsburgh and all and if you don’t love Hines, they make you move) was critical of Rice in the press yesterday, saying that as a 14-year veteran of the NFL he had always believed that “the league stood for integrity” and he was embarrassed to be a part of it. This leaves me wondering, what league was Hines playing for all of those years?
Twenty-something years ago, Charles Barkley declared that he was not a role model. He declared that athletes shouldn’t be thought of as role models. He wasn’t paid to be a role model. He was paid to wreak havoc on the basketball court. He took some shit for that, but I’ve always considered it to be just about the most reasonable thing that any athlete from any sport has ever said. And to the best of my knowledge, Barkley never beat the crap out of anyone in an elevator.
As I was walking across campus the other day I overheard someone comparing Rice to to Michael Vick. As their conversation went on I heard one of them mention that because of what he did, Vick doesn’t really “deserve” to play football. Then I heard the words that always make me cringe. “Playing football is a privilege, not a right!”
No, HOVAdammit… playing football is a job.
Football is a job that requires a specific skill set. A very rare skill set, that at its uppermost level is worth millions. Ray Rice was protected because he’s a 3-time Pro-Bowler. Michael Vick was invited back after his jail stint for the same reason. In February of 2000, Ray Lewis was indicted for murder. He plea bargained it out to obstruction of justice. The NFL fined him $250K. He didn’t miss a single game. Yesterday, he was literally on TV on behalf of the NFL commenting on the horrific nature of the Ray Rice case. When asked about the irony, he said that his crimes and Rice’s don’t compare.
Of course they compare!
That’s the thing. Hines Ward is wrong. The NFL does not now, nor has it ever “stood for integrity.”At least it doesn’t stand for integrity anymore than the NBA, MLB, Apple Computer, Microsoft, McDonalds, Hobby Lobby, Bob’s Donuts or any other company. It’s a company. Some good people work there. Some bad people work there. Hines should know this. Hines was around when his quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger faced charges on two separate counts of sexual assault. Ironically, back in 2011, Ray Rice criticized Ward himself for his DUI arrest. There are always bad incidents.
The problem is, Barkley is right. We hold athletes to a higher standard, because somewhere, sometime, someone decided that the ability to run a a 40-yard dash in 4.42 seconds while carrying a football is supposed to magically make you a morally upstanding citizen. It doesn’t. You’re just as likely to be an asshole as a pro running back as you are as a computer programmer, cashier, or fry-cook. But we don’t expect better out programmers, cashiers and fry cooks. That is why Goodell protects them. If a McDonalds employee beats the hell out of his wife, one of two things happen. Maybe the company fires the person because they don’t want to employ violent individuals. But more likely, the company goes “ok, has he been arrested? No? Well, how is he at cooking french fries?” and everyone moves on with their lives. But generally speaking you don’t have situations where McDonald’s tries to pretend that their employees are bastions of moral goodness, because no one cares.
When we treat the NFL as an elite institution of royalty, Goodell responds by protecting that image. Of course he does. He stands to make zillions by creating the fiction that they “stand for integrity.” It’s not just that Rice was a pro-bowler. If Rice was a second string special teams player, Goodell likely would still not have fired him. He looked at the prospective media shitstorm that could come by admitting that “hey, we have an abusive woman beater in our employ” and decided that if he could bury it and make it go away, he stood to make more money. Rice wasn’t released and suspended for any moral reasons either. Once the second video was out and the shitstorm began, Goodell realized that he had to react “as though he were doing something” or even more fallout would hit the league.
What if football players weren’t supposed to be heroes? What would have happened? Honestly, Rice still wouldn’t have been suspended six months ago. Goodell would have said “this didn’t happen on the football field, let the law handle it.” And as slimy as I find Goodell —as much as I don’t like him — that probably would have been the right answer. Alternatively, we could restructure the whole NFL. Actually enforce morality clauses across the board. Turn them into the heroes and role-models we pretend they are. It will be a much different league. No Rice, no Vick, no Roethlisberger, no Lewis. There wouldn’t even be a Hines Ward. The Minnesota Vikings, New Orleans Saints and New England Patriots would have to be removed as franchises entirely. Half the league would be removed for steroid abuse. Several others for painkillers and weed. In the end, the NFL would be left with one team, The Cleveland Browns, who famously fired Donte Stallworth for a DUI manslaughter arrest because they didn’t want that element being associated with their fine institution.
And so maybe that’s the answer… in the future, all football teams will be the Browns.
Really, I’m fine either way. But please, stop being surprised when stuff like this happens. Stop saying every time that its a shock that something like this could occur. It’s not. It happens all the time.
Well, if the Browns were the only NFL team, then they’d have a good chance of winning the Super Bowl, so there’s that.
I was wondering if you were going to mention BOTH situations with “Big Ben” – being a Pittsburgh native and all. 🙂
Also, the whole thing with Charles barley’s quote is that he was talking about parents and kids. I believe the second part of that quote that often gets left out is something to the effect of “Parents should be role models to their own kids”.
Basically, he was saying the reason why he’s treated as a “role model” is because some kid has his poster up on his wall and how wrong that is because kids should be looking up to their parents before they look up to their favorite athlete.
The thing is, some “boys” who grow up to be men never seem to grow out of that “sports hero worship” syndrome….
Totally agree.
Where I work we talk about “Reputational Risk” as one of the measures of everything done and everyone employed. We do it because we trade on our reputation. Football is, as you say, a business and not really a sport. (I wonder if it would even lose all that much popularity of the games were fixed.) Anyway, in the business of selling entertainment, not being a wife beater is more important than a fast 50 yard dash. A fast 50 yard dash is only as valuable to the NFL as it is entertaining and as it contributes to a team’s reputation. IMHO.
I have a real problem with the two people involved being eliminated from the equation by the media and most of the public. Whatever people think she should have done, whatever speculation they may have about he state of mind, she stated her feelings and was either ignored or vilified.
Since when does the public have that right? Ultimately it should have been her choice to take this public, to press charges, or to live with the incident. She didn’t ask to be the poster woman for domestic violence. For all this talk about “not blaming the victim” there are a lot of people quick to throw this woman under the bus because she didn’t follow whatever script the powers that be have laid out for incidents such as this.
There’s a lot of truth in this post…but there’s also a tendency to look the other way. It’s clever to compare Ray Rice to a McDonald’s fry cook in terms of morality. But then again, how many kids do you see wearing McDonald’s jerseys to school? Or trading cards of McDonald’s cashiers? I get it- athletes aren’t supposed to be role models; they just have a unique set of skills and abilities that make people admire them. But let’s get off the blogging high horse and actually do something about it. Maybe if as a society we didn’t treat pro athletes like they are in fact role models (or even worse – actually let them off of criminal charges because we’ve elevated them to a status that is now “above the law”, as in many of the examples you used here), and instead treated them more like the paid employees you compare them to, this entire conversation would be a moot point. Which let’s face it, isn’t that the whole point of your article? That we shouldn’t treat them as anything other than an employee who is gifted at their job? So how do you propose we stop people from idolizing pro athletes on or off the field? What’s the game plan here? There’s a lot of greedy people making dollars off the talent of 1 individual pro athlete with fan-wear, sponsorship, and the rest. How do you curtail a billion dollar industry or get it to bend to your morality code? I would find THAT discussion much more stimulating…I submit, you’ve got to start somewhere and firing a real dick – regardless how talented he may be – could be that start.
Bobbi: I actually have a different take on it. I DON’T think it would be a start. I think it goes to exactly the same reasoning I was kind of hinting at. The second you fire Rice (or anyone else for moral reasons outside of the occupation), you take on the responsibility of being a moral watchdog. That would be fine if they could maintain it, but clearly they can’t. I don’t think it’s necessary to have a morality code. It is a sport. Barkley’s point is that all that matters is what happens on the field/court. We have trading cards because it is fun to celebrate that ability. When baseball cards were first invented there was not even a pretense of moral superiority. Baseball players were famous for their boozing and womanizing. They were seen as malcontents. The celebration was for their on the field performance.
The problem is you can’t force cultural change. You can do things to nudge it, but you can’t force it. If we, as a culture, really believed that we wanted moral role models as sports heroes, the cultural market would make that happen organically. But we don’t feel that way. We actually value athletic ability far more than morality. But that “sounds bad” to say out loud, so we pretend we don’t feel that way. But we do.
Again, Ray Lewis was wanted for murder. Even if he wasn’t actually responsible (and legally he isn’t), he ACKNOWLEDGES that he was guilty of obstructing justice in a murder case. And he went on to a hall-of-game career and is still employed as an analyst today. Why? Because he was a hell of a ball player. that’s why.
Wait! George Washington is French? How did I not know this before???!
Ima let you finish, but Fort Duquesne was built by the French, and its location was captured by General John Forbes.
Correct on George friends. The tape shows a felony assault, if she doesnt want to press charges then DA can pick em up, if not it should go away. She doesn’t have a problem with it.
I’m just going to say “I agree” and leave it at that.
I have a couple serious thoughts but no time for them at the moment so I’ll just say even if they were the only team, I am confident the Browns would find a way to come in fourth in the division and miss the playoffs.
Haha…if you would have asked me (before I read this) whose statues were at the PIA, I would have said Franco Harris and the T-Rex. Totally don’t remember Washington.
My wife is British – when she saw the two statues, she identified Franco immediately but had no idea who the other guy might be – no idea.
No, you gotta feel for the wife. The fiancee signed on to be a million dollar punching bag. Now she’s just a punching bag.
He still has millions.
Plus there will be a book deal, TV movie, appearance on the view. Hell, if the media is going to take over her life she may as well cash in.
So, I’ve been thinking on this angle and I’m not sure about it. I want to pick out a certain piece: “Maybe the company fires the person because they don’t want to employ violent individuals. But more likely, the company goes “ok, has he been arrested? No? Well, how is he at cooking french fries?” ”
Every job I’ve ever applied for, that I can remember, (I believe even including McDonalds, but that was a long time ago, I don’t trust my memory 100%), has required a criminal background check. I even once was called into the HR office to explain tickets received for things like “disobeying a park sign” and having an open container of alcohol on the street once. It may seem more private, but most employers very much care about criminal behavior, at least at the beginning. I’m less sure about how “most employers” react to one being arrested, but there are plenty out there with random drug tests who are willing to fire at a positive result, no matter how good a fry-cook they may be.
So, I guess I’m wondering if, as an employer-employee relationship, it is really a different standard, or just a much more public one.
I think the fact that they (athletes) are less replaceable, is why they even have the possibility of coming back a la Michael Vick.
A fry cook couldn’t even argue how well he cooks. McDs doesn’t care, new fry cooks are applying every day.
In this case there didn’t have to be an arrest, or a filed complaint. What he did was messed up, but she didn’t want to make a big deal, too bad the rest of the world decided she hadn’t been victimized enough. It’s easy to look at Rice and say “you are a fucker, you deserve what you got”, but that apparently isn’t what she wanted. It just feels wrong to me, very wrong, to take that away from her. I don’t know. Messed up all around.
Can I share this on my wall? It says everything I have been trying to say, only much more eloquently.
The NFL is not Greenpeace, but it _is_ entertainment.
Nobody is watching football because it’s meaningful or somehow useful. People watch it because it’s entertaining to cheer your preferred team, trash-talk the opposing team, and get all emotionally-invested in something that is full of action and exciting that doesn’t require getting off the couch and interrupting their beer and Frito intake.
Since it is entertainment, PR matters. If players do something shitty enough, it can make it less fun to consume. It’s not fun to hate the players you also want to win.
Mostly it just irritates me how inconsistent the fan-base can be on what’s outrage-worthy.
And yes, it’s pretty obvious that the NFL only really came down on Rice after there was enough public outrage to be a PR problem.
This makes me want to root for Cleveland.
Amy: Sure you can. That’s why I write them!
“If we, as a culture, really believed that we wanted moral role models as sports heroes, the cultural market would make that happen organically.”
Setting aside the radical denial of agency there, part of “organic” systems change is feedback pressure. Social movements don’t happen when no-one takes heat.
Reducing the social phenomena of athletic admiration – which no two people have a consistent definition of – to “field performance” is needless essentializing, like an economist invoking Coase Theorem to validate anything.
Max K: Oh, I agree there. I’m not saying that social pressure CAN’T change a system. Just the opposite. I’m saying only social pressure does change a system. But it has to be real social pressure. not the arbitrary pretense of it.
Canning Rice allows the league to create the pretense of “we care about domestic violence” without actually doing anything all that substantive regarding morality. Basically sacrificing him has net effect of creating a poster boy for “look, we do stuff!” so that next time say, a team decides to have a prostitute orgy on a boat somewhere, its actually even easier to look the other way.
And the truth is, no one really cares about prostitute orgies on boats. They just like to say they do because it sounds good.
On the other hand, if people really care about them, and stopped going to Vikings games, the league would look more seriously at placing moral fiber above athletic ability.
But we don’t care about morality. We’re perfectly happy to look the other way so long as a player performs except when the off-the-field behavior crosses a hazily defined cultural line in the sand. Roethlisberger, The Vikings, Vick… never crossed that line, apparently. It looks like Ray Rice has.
That’s deeply cynical.
you think? how so?
(I mean, I’m an extremely cynical person in general… but that didn’t feel cynical to me at all)
How else can we read assertions like “But we don’t care about morality. We’re perfectly happy to look the other way”
as a reading of the current cultural climate? I mean, as I said, after their “outrageous moral behavior” Roethlisberger, Vick, Lewis and the Vikings offense went on to have very lucrative careers. So we (as a culture) apparently were willing to look the other way.
I don’t understand how you could have any other takeaway from this than the one Chris has. EVERYONE (the league, the team, the coaches, the hardcore fans, and even casual fans like me) knew the exact details of this incident back in February. We knew it because Ray Rice outright admitted to it, explicitly. Despite this perfect knowledge, only a few people gave a meaningful objection when he received a 2 game suspension. That objection increased significantly when Josh Gordon received a year suspension for drugs. And about two weeks ago Goodell “admitted he made a mistake” and said that 6 weeks (1st offense) / lifetime (2nd offense) would be the punishment in the future incidents. And, for the most part, the public response to that was: “Great decision.”
Then the tape aired. And the exact same public flipped completely because human beings overreact to video while they under react to any other depiction. No evidence changed, AT ALL. And everyone important had EXACTLY the same knowledge (I consider people who don’t really care about football to not really be important in this discussion). But suddenly, what was acceptable before was no longer acceptable. So, yes, as a culture, unless video is pushed in our face by every single news outlet, we DO look the other way.
People’s proprietary feelings for local teams don’t hinge on rational absolutes, pivot quickly, or reject the possibility of contradictory reactions. I think the only “cultural climate” is that most people don’t give a shit about football, and most of those who do have plenty of other reasons to like football that this incident doesn’t outweigh.
“People’s proprietary feelings for local teams don’t hinge on rational absolutes, pivot quickly, or reject the possibility of contradictory reactions.”
No they don’t… that’s exactly what I’m saying. The decision to like a sport, or a sport team is not a logical decision.
“I think the only “cultural climate” is that most people don’t give a shit about football,”
Ok, that’s true, but only technically… polls generally show that about 49% of Americans are NFL fans. So, yes… most people are NOT football fans, but only by a thin margin. It just so happens, that it’s the same margin as flipping a quarter. In reality quarters are 51-49 chance of landing heads. So liking football or not, is actually exactly a coin flip!
“and most of those who do have plenty of other reasons to like football that this incident doesn’t outweigh.”
Right, that’s exactly what I said! That’s not cynical at all. I’m saying that we (the 49% of people who follow the NFL) don’t care about morality enough to outweigh player ability EXCEPT when the transgression passes a certain critical mass (what Rice did). The 51% who don’t like football are mostly willing to ignore it, EXCEPT when the transgression passes a certain critical mass.
Firing Rice makes it easier to ignore all those other transgressions that don’t quite hit the line. That’s not cynical at all.
… or firing Rice makes it easier to fire other players because it sets a precedent that can get invoked. Or not firing Rice ultimately causes other people to drift to other sports in the long term. There’s no last link from your premise to your conclusion unless one a priori decides to assume the worst of people.
nope… I assume nothing about worst or best at all. I’m morality agnostic. I don’t even think it’s “bad” per se that people don’t care about morality. I just watch cultural shifts over time and base my arguments on cultural theory.
If you really believe that this is the dawning of a new age of zero-tolerance by the NFL as Roger Goodell has turned over a new leaf… well, I mean, we’re never going to agree on that, and only time will tell anyway.
But that wasn’t really my “point” per se. My point was more the continued “surprise” people claim when stuff like this happens and the insistence that there is some semblance of integrity that we all agree the League is supposed to live by. There isn’t.
Strauss: your reasoning is pretty much exactly what I’m saying.
Compare the NFL to the NHL. The NHL holding a far, far higher standard doesn’t seem to hurt the sport?
“If you really believe that this is the dawning of a new age of zero-tolerance by the NFL” // “…the continued ‘surprise’ people claim…” — straw-man arguments aren’t persuasive, yo.
Things get better or worse by degrees. I don’t think *not* firing Rice is withholding some opiate-of-the-masses that will sustain people’s outrage, either.
Dean: well, maybe it does… I mean, the NHL is the 5th most popular sport in this country. The NFL is second. SO who knows, maybe it would hurt.
But I never said it would hurt the sport. I said that if we wanted it to matter then lots of changes would have to be made, and the NFL does not seem to ACTUALLY be interested in doing that, so much as giving the pretense that they do.
that’s not a straw man! I’m literally responding to something I heard twice yesterday, by a random passerby and by Hines Ward.
Well, if I responded to every dumb thing I heard on the street we’ll be here all day (hint: I live in San Francisco). And Hine’s Ward isn’t human, he’s like a insect-lizard person, right?
sure… I choose what I want to respond to and what I don’t. But that’s not a straw man. It’s a response to an opinion that is getting some tracking and that bothered me… that’s what blogs are for, isn’t it?
Well, I mean, reasonable not-just-rando-strangers can want the league to get better without thinking this one action will enter a “new age” — or that they’re hypocritical for continuing to be a fan no matter which outcome while still hoping for things to get better.
I think we 90% agree, but saying “we still pay for it, so we must not care” is the bit that doesn’t ring true. For a fan to walk away from football means more than just withholding their dollars — they’re paying a huge non-classically-quantifiable transaction cost.
(esp in Pittsburgh -_^)
But I never reduced it to a pure financial argument. You’re right. It’s not. What I said, is that people don’t care in enough about the morality aspect to offset their enjoyment of the sport.
That’s not just spending money on tickets or eyeballs on commercials. That’s following it in sports pages. That’s self identifying as a fan of the sport. Roethlisberger jersey sales are HUGE… people are fans. Ray Lewis has been given a job as a commentator purely based on his popularity. Their transgressions (alleged rape and murder) are therefore not bad enough to offset people’s specifically enjoyment of them individually.
That’s why I was confused about where you think I’m being cynical here.
Compartmentalization/tribalism? People here hear you’re from PIttsburgh and they immediately remind you that Roethlisberger is a rapist. That doesn’t detract from their 49ers love.
Um… statues of our THREE most important residents. Don’t gloss over Tyrannosaurus Rex. 😉
Mark: Stephanie pointed him out too… He’s clearly less important, he’s a level down! I mean you have to take a whole escalator and everything!
That’s just demonstrating strata. That escalator doesn’t represent a separation in status, just duration. That’s 65 million years on that escalator ride…
Where does the mighty BridgeBot fit into this?
Max B: I think the fact that no one mentioned it before now answers your question.
BridgeBot could kick Washington’s ass. That’s why Washington’s always crossing the Delaware in that little boat…he’s scared of BridgeBot.
Steelers? Where is Chris? What have you done with him robot!
Uhhhh. Dude. I was a steelers fan back home. I used to come to school and laugh at the browns for choking on the broncos EVERT YEAR in the playoffs.
I know. You never followed the crowd, that’s why we were buds…but I still had to check if you were a robot