I like football. A lot. I like watching it, I like reading about it, and I like participating in it through fantasy football. Unfortunately, I just can't ignore the unsavory things about it. Don't get me wrong--what happened to Sean Taylor is a tragedy; anyone dying so young and leaving behind a child is bad. And I obviously don't know him; I don't even know much about him as a player, save what I've read in all the coverage of the incident. I'm in no position to judge, clearly. And I hesitate to write these things, except that it's very troubling to me.
The thing is, was Sean Taylor a thug? There seem to be some problems in the NFL with thug-players, from the jail time served by Ray Lewis to the jail time currently being served by Michael Vick (for two different things, obviously). And there is so much in between those two things--Pacman Jones and the 8 (or was it more?) different arrests of players of the Bengals in the last few years. Tank Johnson and Rae Carruth and Fred Lane and Mark Chmura, these are all players that have had problems with the law. And it seems to me that Sean Taylor's death is just the latest in a string of problems that the NFL is dealing with. He was arrested for armed assault in 2005, and that wasn't his first problem with the law. Are the two things related? Who knows? But it doesn't look good, that's what I think.
It's not as if as a society we've been ignoring the problems of these young, rich athletes. I've read more than a few articles about the issue, and if you do a search on google for any combination of athlete, NFL, football player, jail, thug and so on, you get a lot of results. The question is, what do we do about it? Of course, we could stop supporting the sports that tolerate and breed this behavior. There's no doubt in my mind that the NFL isn't doing enough to stop this sort of thing. The fact that Pacman Jones might play again in the league should be evidence enough that the situation is out of control. I guess what I'm advocating is a zero-tolerance policy. You commit a crime, you're out. I don't care if it's marijuana possession or armed robbery or freaking murder. Or dog abuse.
I guess there's not really a gray area for me. I don't think anyone should be rewarded for participating in something that isn't right, no matter how much they protest coercion or ignorance or loyalty to old friends (which is apparently what some of these men argue; that it's some form of ghetto loyalty). And to me, being able to make millions of dollars playing a game is more of a reward than a punishment, no matter the beating that your body takes. If you can think of an extenuating circumstance that would make some sort of criminal record somehow look-over-able, please share it. (To be clear, I'm not talking about problems before the person became a sports star, whether that was in college or later. I'm talking problems that happen after the fame and money.) I want to understand how we can overlook these problems without missing a beat. How we can think winning is more important that ethics. Because as much as I love the Bears, and I want them to win, I think that the Tank Johnson decision was the right one, even if he could have helped our defense.
Winning--not the most important thing, in the end. But to the moneymen and the coaches and those people, I guess it must trump all. It must, if they're letting these guys back on the field. Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me I'm making more out of this than I should. Because I really want to keep watching football, and I'm finding it very hard to be a supporter of the sport right now.
1) Well, you're totally wrong. It's patently absurd to say that anyone who has legal trouble should be deprived of the opportunity to work. If the player involved serves his debt to society, and a team is willing to employ them, they should absolutely be able to play. You think someone should be banned from the NFL for marijuana possession? Do you think someone should be banned from working in a library, or a bookstore, or a law office, or anywhere else for the same thing? I hate to be in a position of defending Pacman Jones, but as of right now, the worst that he's been convicted of in a court of law is a misdemeanor. If he serves his suspension this year and avoids further legal trouble, he should certainly be allowed to play.
2) Some of these guys are thugs (sidenote: there's going to be a lot more to this Taylor story than what we currently know. I'd be shocked if this were simply a botched robbery), absolutely, but there are going to be bad apples everywhere. Thinking that Rae Carruth and Sean Taylor represent all football players would be like thinking that Drew Peterson and the cop who beat the shit out of that woman bartender represent all police officers.
3) I think the idea that professional athletes should have some overwhelming sense of gratitude is misplaced. You can't talk all the time about how invested you are in the NFL, and then insinuate that the players are overpaid, or lucky to get as much as they do. It's capitalism. This is how the system works. Professional athletes make exactly as much as they ought to, because that's what the market will bear.
4) Does the NFL have an image problem? Certainly. Are professional athletes getting into too much trouble because of their sense of entitlement and disregard for others? Probably. But it's just as much our fault as it is theirs. When a society puts as high a premiun on athletic performance as ours does, things are going to fly out of whack. I have a hard time completely blaming someone who's been treated like a god since adolescenece for thinking they're special. It's all they've ever known.
Posted by: Tim | November 27, 2007 at 11:58 AM
Well, no, I don't think marijuana possession should stop you from working in a library, in fact. And I'm inclined to be lenient elsewhere as well, except that being a professional athlete (which is a job, yes) is a lot different from being a librarian. No little kids are going out and buying librarian dresses with my name on the back of them. I do think that we (whoever the amorphous we is--the NFL, consumers, whatever) have some kind of obligation here, and I'm not sure what exactly that means except that I don't think it's okay for these guys to keep getting passes for being on the wrong side of the law. It's completely okay to say that one type of job is different from another. I don't want a rapist working as a cop. Point blank. I don't want a chronic pot smoker (with convictions) to be my bus driver. I think we're allowed to make those distinctions, and I think for the good of everyone involved, people who are in very public, very worshippable jobs shouldn't be allowed to continually break the law and retain their jobs.
Furthermore, I totally understand that there are football players doing great things for the community. For every Tank Johnson there's a Peanut Tillman, working with the charities to do good. I'm not saying that five thugs are the whole league. But I do think the whole league is complicit in those 5 thugs' behavior when nothing is done about it. And I do think it's fair to boycott something because some of the people involved in that something are bad.
Now. Is it our fault? Patently. Of course. We pay for tickets, for TV packages, for jerseys, for FF league software, whatever. We produce the demand for these men to do what they do. But that doesn't mean we aren't allowed to have qualms about it, or wish things were different.
I guess I just think that sometimes people make mistakes and maybe those mistakes lead to a misdemeanor conviction, or whatever, and they didn't mean it and whoops! But sometimes when you make a really bad mistake, you don't get to do the things you once did, because the mistake was just that bad. That's all. We can disagree about this until the cows come home, but the truth is, yeah, I do believe some offenses should prohibit people from holding certain jobs. Like I said, I don't want the cop who gives me a ticket on a cold dark winter night to be a rapist. I don't think that makes me unfair in the least.
And as for the last point, I don't care how you've been treated your whole life. There is right, and there is wrong. I don't care why you broke the damn law, but you did it. If some player thinks he's invincible and above the law because he's been given that impression, I'm sorry for him. But I will still blame him. And hell, the system that gave him that impression. Like I said, I'm certainly to blame here. I'm not escaping without blood on my hands.
Posted by: manogirl | November 27, 2007 at 02:36 PM
But you're making comparisons that don't hold up. A police officer's job is to enforce the law. If he breaks laws, it has a direct impact on his ability to do his job. Same for the bus-driving pothead. Being a thug doesn't prevent someone from doing their job as a football player. If a team feels that a player's worth on the field is outweighed by their risks as a public figure, they get rid of them. This is exactly what the Bears did with Tank Johnson. Tank reached the point where his troubles off the field led to an image problem that was too great for his contributions on the field to overcome. I'm not at all saying that the Bears should have kept him. What I'm saying is that it's up for each individual team to make that calculation for themselves, not for the NFL to decide that someone who's been arrested for any crime should be banned for life. And I just don't buy the role model thing. It's the responsibility of parents to impress upon their children that while it's perfectly fine to marvel at these people's athletic achievements, they should find their actual role models somewhere else. The NFL shouldn't be obligated to act as a nation's nanny.
Posted by: Tim | November 27, 2007 at 03:10 PM
I guess I would argue that part of a football player's job is being a role model. Now, I agree completely that parents should have the primary responsibility for impressing into their children a sense of balance and reality, but the world isn't ideal. Isn't the way some of these thugs became thugs due to a lack of good parenting? I think you can make that argument.
Anyway, since I'm arguing that being a role model is part of the job (and I think it is, which is partly why I have such a problem with steroids in baseball), then yes, being a thug DOES prevent you from doing your job.
I think ultimately, we are going to have to agree to disagree.
Posted by: manogirl | November 27, 2007 at 08:26 PM