NFL & domestic abuse

[The NZA]

might as well start this off with The Onion

 

More Cities Using Text-Based Alert System To Warn Americans If They Are In Range Of NFL Players

 

 

[Jumbie]

Since this is the *NFL* and abuse thread, I guess we don't have to have a debate about how terrible battering your wife/gf is or excusing it. The focus here is on the NFL, it's policies and any way it contributes to the problem?

 

I'd be interested in seeing what the rate is with NFL players abuse (if such a thing is trackable) and any other profession with a workforce of young males in a highly competitive setting, say stockbrokers/construction workers/video game designers. I'm tempted to say military/fishermen/oilmen but those guys live away from home for long periods and probably have other factors. NFL players take their demons home with them most nights.

 

The point I want to get to is whether the NFL is a special case of policy gone wrong or just reaping the fallout of it's workforce demographics. Boxing and the NFL etc have a history of being targeted for 'promoting violence' in a culture war setting and I'm wary of this controversy being hotter than normal because of that.

 

------------------------------------------

 

And now my rant:

 

If a janitor at an NFL stadium was to be arrested for beating up his wife, who would call for him to be suspended/fired? Nobody. But we get calls for players to be fired/suspended. Why?

 

In the real world we seem to understand that a job is a job and punishments for doing wrong come out of the legal or social system. Yet with celebrities when they commit some error/crime/offense. People look to get them fired or get their show cancelled etc.

 

I think there are two reasons:

 

1. Celebrities are often seen as not having real jobs. Singers, actors, comedians, athletes aren't really working in the minds of many people. Not the way a bus driver or even an NFL referee is working. So the idea of getting a celebrity 'fired', especially an athlete, is seen more as punishing a rich guy who didn't earn it rather than depriving someone of a job. It's part of a larger discomfort people have with athlete pay that has been going on since the 80s.

 

If Ray Rice were to go get a job working as a garbage-man to pay his bills, I bet no one would be demanding he get fired from that job. Because the idea of calling for Rice to be fired from the NFL isn't to take away his job. It's to take away his privilege.

 

'People who do bad things shouldn't live well' is not a morally supportable sentiment, but many folks push that.

 

2. Celebrities get noticed for obvious reasons. All those people calling for Ray Rice to be fired, I wonder how many of them go through their police blotter, finding the battery arrests and the turn up at the neighborhood Kinko's to demand that the manager fire Joe Smith for hitting his kid? How many go the DMV office to demand that Jill Smith the desk clerk get suspended because she ripped out someone's weave in a bar brawl the night before?

 

Again, I'm going to state that I'm not defending anyone's violence. But the punishment is to be applied through the legal and social arenas: You send people to jail. You shun them. You ridicule and condemn them.

 

But blacklisting them from an industry? When Elia Kazan got his Lifetime Oscar, Nick Nolte and half the actors literally turned their back on him because Kazan had helped blacklist communists in Hollywood during the 50s. We understand that messing with people's jobs isn't right.

 

A separate, but related question is, 'Should the NFL have suspended/fired Rice?'

 

Hell Yes. But not on any moral grounds. On PR grounds. It's bad press for the organization and as a private organization it's sound business to fire someone who embarrasses them. But the idea that they have to 'punish' Rice is nonsense. We have a legal system for punishment.

 

+++++++++++++++++++++++

 

I have more to say, but I'm running late for an work. Fucking Hondo's. I come in here to post a five minute comments and spend half and hour composing a lecture... I bet my productivity plunges 50% now that this site is back up.

[FireDownBelow]

A separate, but related question is, 'Should the NFL have suspended/fired Rice?'

 

Hell Yes. But not on any moral grounds. On PR grounds. It's bad press for the organization and as a private organization it's sound business to fire someone who embarrasses them. But the idea that they have to 'punish' Rice is nonsense. We have a legal system for punishment.

 

That says it all for me.

 

But, you might taken into consideration that many celebrities serve as role models. Do you want a wife-beater as a role model? Also, many organizations have a code of conduct that they expect their members to adhere to. If you don't, you get booted. Even if it is your job. Some companies, not organization but provate companies, do not allow employees to smoke.

Edited September 19, 2014 by FireDownBelow

[Jumbie]

For reference on the role model issue, I offer Sir Charles:

 

 

Now, I actually think Barkley's world has changed. In 1993 it might have been true that he was not paid to be a role model.

 

Today, athletes absolutely are paid to be role models, because kids' adoration is a revenue source. Sports teams stopped being about winning championships a long time ago. But that's the point: Athletes get paid to deliver something and if they don't they can be fired for not holding up their end of the bargain. Ray Rice had value to the Ravens for his 'good guy' image. He removed that value by his actions. Hence the team has no obligation to pay him.

 

The thing that got me angry is the idea that NFL or any other sports organisation is responsible for punishing people who break non-sports laws as if they were an ancillary justice system. Worse yet that the punishment involves taking away income through suspension or firing.

 

Seriously, those people so outraged over the NFL abuse policy that you're buying tickets so you can hold up 'Goodell must go!' signs, what is it you think he should have done and why was it his job to do it?

[The NZA]

source

 

The seven-month scandal that is threatening Roger Goodell's future as NFL commissioner began with an unexpected phone call in the early morning hours on a Saturday in February.

 

Just hours after running back Ray Rice knocked out his then-fiancée with a left hook at the Revel Hotel Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the Baltimore Ravens' director of security, Darren Sanders, reached an Atlantic City police officer by phone. While watching surveillance video -- shot from inside the elevator where Rice's punch knocked his fiancée unconscious -- the officer, who told Sanders he just happened to be a Ravens fan, described in detail to Sanders what he was seeing.

 

Sanders quickly relayed the damning video's play-by-play to team executives in Baltimore, unknowingly starting a seven-month odyssey that has mushroomed into the biggest crisis confronting a commissioner in the NFL's 95-year history.

 

"Outside the Lines" interviewed more than 20 sources over the past 11 days -- team officials, current and former league officials, NFL Players Association representatives and associates, advisers and friends of Rice -- and found a pattern of misinformation and misdirection employed by the Ravens and the NFL since that February night.

 

After the Feb. 15 incident in the casino elevator, Ravens executives -- in particular owner Steve Bisciotti, president Dick Cass and general manager Ozzie Newsome -- began extensive public and private campaigns pushing for leniency for Rice on several fronts: from the judicial system in Atlantic County, where Rice faced assault charges, to commissioner Goodell, who ultimately would decide the number of games Rice would be suspended from this fall, to within their own building, where some were arguing immediately after the incident that Rice should be released.

 

 

 

also, Ray Rice jersey trade-in

 

[Jumbie]

OW OW OW, wall of text hurts!

[Mr. Hakujin]

Ray Rice suspension overruled in arbitration. He's now free to sign with whatever team will take him. Now the question is, will any team sign him? Panch, Benz, etc. what are your predictions for the future of Ray Rice's NFL career? Edited November 29, 2014 by Mr. Hakujin