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Sports Scandals Are Ruining My Favorite Time of Year
When I picked up my kids from school today, I turned to a Phoenix sports radio station for the half-hour update.
First story: Police arrested Arizona Cardinals running back Jonathan Dwyer on suspicion of aggravated assault.
Second story: The Carolina Panthers put defensive end Greg Hardy on the NFL commissioner’s “exempt list” due to his recent domestic violence conviction.
Third Story: Minnesota Vikings star Adrian Peterson has been deactivated indefinitely for allegations of child abuse.
Fourth and Final Story: The Arizona Diamondbacks are currently facing the San Francisco Giants in the final game of their home stand. (I didn’t even get a score.)
This isn’t a sports update, it’s a police blotter.
All year long I wait for fall. Arizona temperatures plunge from the 110s to the 100s, the cacti change from one shade of green to slightly different shade of green, and my beloved NFL takes the field. I enjoy baseball, watch some hockey, gave up on basketball, but football is number one. I watch the draft, set up several fantasy football teams and read up on the prospects for my favorite teams (Packers and Cardinals, in that order).
But despite having three local sports radio stations, ESPN 1 through 3, several Fox Sports channels and NBCSN — not to mention the broadcast networks — I can barely follow my favorite sport. For the past couple of weeks it has been Ray Rice beating his fiancee, Adrian Peterson “whooping” his kid, and whether Commissioner Roger Goodell should lose his job.
I DON’T CARE.
Okay, I care that justice is done, the guilty punished and Roger Goodell get his comeuppance. But I turn to sports as a way of turning off crime stories, politics and business news. My personal media landscape is steeped in ugly election campaigns, rumors of war, and man’s inhumanity to man. Sports is one of my few escapes. Or at least it used to be.
When I flip to ESPN, I want to see the plays of the day, not red switch marks on an abused child. I want to preview the Sunday match-ups, not listen to lawyers discussing the criminal appeals process.
Can one so-called sports network get back to discussing sports, or is that too much to ask?
Published in General
Fifth Story: Conscience of the Nation Gloria Allred can’t allow the injustice to continue, so she has fixed her beady little eye on Brandon Marshall, the Chicago Bears, and especially Roger “Who Me?” Goodell. They are primarily guilty of leaving Gloria an opportunity to draw attention to herself.
The NFL has transmogrified from a sports league into a soap opera.
The media won’t let them get back to discussing the play of the day. Instead they have to focus on the arrest of the day. However, having said that, you do know that these players and their teams can’t just settle in for the season like it was just any other year? These players have allegedly committed crimes and their teams must address these issues rather than sweep it under the rug as if it never occurred or the “incidents” aren’t serious enough to warrant immediate attention. The league must address personnel issues like any other corporation would do given the same alleged crimes.
I love football, always have since I was a little girl watching the games with my Dad. I, too would rather watch a game without hearing a lecture from an announcer. But athletes, no matter who they are or how high their salaries, aren’t any different from the average Joe who commits the same crime. The NFL or any other professional sports league needs to step up and lead these young men and sometimes you have to make hard choices regarding suspensions or terminations that will not be popular but not only show respect for the victims of these crimes, but for the game as well.
Sixth Story:
Diamondbacks Manager Kirk Gibson is a thug headhunter who put Andrew McCutchen on the DL.
They’ll make restitution by wearing pink for the month of October.
Why oh why does the world blame every university, every organization, and everybody save the parents? (Or should I say lack thereof.)
Add the Jameis Winston story to your list. Being benched for the first half of the Clem(p)son/FSU game. Any bets on that being changed to the whole game by Saturday?
Seventh Story:
Flagapalooza is killing the NFL for me and others I know. It’s no longer football. Hence a change in the logo is on order:
I agree 100% with everything you said, and still I think the OP has a point. It is possible to both expect the league and the teams to address firmly the criminal acts of some of the players, and also to do a little talking about the actual games that the non-criminal players are still playing.
I just find it bizarre all this caterwauling regarding what the NFL, or any league, does or does not do with regard to possible criminal infractions. Is this not a matter of law enforcement? Why can’t people simply let the criminal justice system take its course?
You could always change channels to get Bob Costas’ views on gun control and global warming. Then back to ESPN to get educated by now bearded therefore profound Bob Ley on the word “Redskins.” These [expletive] don’t seem to get that I invite them into my living room to discuss sports. I don’t want the cable guy or meter reader to lecture me on tax policy. I don’t want the Sunday morning NFL commentators talking about child-rearing methods.
In my youth I sometimes visited bar(s) where some of the Redskins were regulars. Football players were not millionaires then. Things were said and sometimes done. Nobody took pictures or called the media and they would not have reported it if you did.
The lack of privacy for public figures is also an invasion of everybody else’s mental space. The politicization and op-ed-ization of sports and all else is violative of serenity and proportion.
This is all I want to hear from sports guys: “N. has been suspended for off-the-field-incidents which will be covered by your regular news stations. We hope that N. and his family come out of this as well as possible. The team has announced that S. will start in his place. How do you guys on the panel think this will affect Sunday’s game?”
They can, but many people, myself included, think it’s pretty unbecoming for the league to associate itself with people of loathsome character. I’d expect most any business owner to tell a wife beating or child abusing employee to hit the bricks if the owner knew of it. All the more so if the employee was in the public eye and his behavior reflected publicly on the character of the business. Obviously these are first and foremost criminal matters, but the league and the teams have an interest in how they react to these allegations, and in how they’re seen to react to them.
Blondie:
Dunno about that. He is a Heisman candidate. He needs the stats. FSU wants the pub. Also FSU ‘s parent company (Nike) has stuff to sell.
You’d almost think Valerie ItsPaybackTime Jarrett was offended that the NFL refused to back Obamacare, and made a few media phone calls. I guess there are nothing but angels playing in the NBA.
I am over the moral panic
So what’s changed? Well, for one thing, we have. Many people are done giving passes to people who do bad things just because a great many of their fellow Americans enjoy watching them work on a Sunday afternoon.
While we need to insist on due process, watching Ray Rice clock his girlfriend on video tape is a no-brainer. You want to hit something? Fine. Hit the road, Jack.
And no, I don’t care if that decision screws up your fantasy team.
No Fun League.
The Pinktober idiocy is reason enough to fire Goodell.
I don’t disagree with a single thing that you have expressed here, but again, let’s place the blame where it is due. It shouldn’t be upon the NFL; if anything the league should be lauded for the opportunities it has given young people who were raised in total dereliction to make a decent and honest living.
If thugs (after several years in the NCAA) can’t figure out how to take advantage of opportunity, then arrest them all and I might go so far as to suggest some more discriminating background checks on players before the draft. I understand it is a competitive league but Tom Brady, Russell Wilson, Clay Matthews are all winners and law-abiding citizens.
What I do want is to resist blaming Roger Goodell. It isn’t his fault; David Stern has had his fair share of scandals as had- already!- Adam Silver and Bud Selig and will Ron Manfred.
How long until the EEOC charges that the new no-tolerance policy violates Title VII because it has a disparate impact on black players?
Ok, I do blame him for that.
Goodell is the latest in a long line of commissioners and team officials who looked the other way, and he happens to be the figurehead who was sitting in the chair the day the rules changed and it was no longer ok to look the other way.
Bad luck for him, but not entirely undeserved.
Jon, there’s nothing in the OP about ESPN commentator Kate Fagan saying about Ray Rice that “I think that right now all of this reactive behavior is not going to change it, as much as going in and going into the school system and the younger spaces and really reprogramming how we raise men.”
Shouldn’t that be on your sports stories of the day list ??? It’s so important to get the man out of men.
Let the law handle the law breakers. I want to watch football without listening to the journalists wailing. It’s not the responsibility of the NFL to keep players from playing unless they have been convicted of crimes. Then those criminals will be in jail, where they belong.
The AFL-NFL merger of 1969 should be repealed.
Jon, I gave up on sports radio years ago, (Oberman did me in) and can’t stomach ESPN or NBC’s commentary for more than a few minutes. For football I listen to the Around the NFL Podcast almost exclusively. It’s four NFL.com writers who do three 45-minute podcasts a week (ahem Ricochet) and have a lot of fun behind the mic. They spend a few minutes on news, and then get straight to games, previews, predictions etc..
I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to get into the games without all the PC spin machines influence. Plus, they almost never talk about fantasy football, which is a peeve of mine. I recommend checking it out.
Actually Jon, since you mentioned you are a Packer fan, it occurs to me to recommend Packers Talk Radio Network podcasts which you can subscribe to on iTunes. During the season, it produces several podcasts a week with different hosts (of varying quality in my opinion but most quite knowledgeable — my favorites are the “Packers Therapy” guys). The plus — they’ve been beginning the podcasts lately with some statement like “we know there are other things going on in the league right now and we don’t mean to minimize their importance, but they’ve been getting adequate coverage elsewhere, so we’re going to talk about the game.”
Maybe Goodell should get the same treatment as Joe Paterno, who also looked the other way. All games during his tenure in office should be forfeited.
I KNOW!!! I already have a hard enough time escaping reality by sports immersion and now I can’t even tell the difference between a sports broadcast and the news!
I used to enjoy listening to Bill Simmons on ESPN’s Sports Guy podcast. It has gotten pretty unbearably liberal, along with all of ESPN, over the last several years not to mention overly focused on pop culture instead of sports. I still enjoyed his NFL pick’em segment with Cousin Sal then for week two matchups Simmons was (HORRORS) unthinkingly saying the word REDSKINS when referring to their upcoming game….and they bleeped it like it was a curse word! Oh come on!!!