The National Football League has always graded potential players on size, speed and strength.
After the league’s most embarrassing two weeks in its history, character is now a bigger part of the equation.
But make no mistake, this isn’t some epiphany. The league’s leaders and owners didn’t suddenly wake up and pledge to “get it right,” as so many of them have said in recent days.
The NFL only started pretending to address the issues when mega-sponsors such as Anheuser Busch, the league’s $1.2 billion beer broker, voiced concern.
Say what you want about an alcohol company being the moral compass in a discussion about domestic violence. Corporations are finally letting the NFL know a lesson they don’t even bother teaching in Business 101.
Hitting women and children is bad for business.
Goodell’s press conference Friday was embarrassing to watch. We needed to see genuine passion for addressing domestic violence; the same fire NBA commish Adam Silver voiced in taking a stand against racism by banning Donald Sterling.
Instead he sounded like a school bully being forced to apologize in front of the class. He deflected questions, answered vaguely and dismissed the notion that he’d resign by saying “Because I acknowledge my mistakes.”
Isn’t that exactly what Ray Rice did?
As long as troublemakers could run, block or lead fourth-quarter touchdown drives, they were good for business. The only question a football team considered was “could they play?”
That’s not the case anymore.
The Minnesota Vikings decided to keep their distance from Adrian Peterson and his “parenting” methods, but only after sponsors got nervous.
The Arizona Cardinals quickly told running back Jonathan Dwyer to stay away from the team after his arrest for breaking his wife’s nose with a headbutt.
Jameis Winston, the 20-going-on-15-year-old Florida State quarterback has a rap sheet that includes shoplifting crab legs, yelling obscenities and being investigated for sexual assault.
Once considered a top overall pick, his draft stock is falling because teams are petrified of negative publicity in the wake of Rice and Peterson. Negative stories in the media are bad for business, after all.
It would have been nice if the NFL genuinely wanted to use its visibility and influence to fight the scourge of domestic violence.
We now know better. The NFL and its tone-deaf leader are foremost concerned with keeping the money coming in from sponsors and TV-rights deals. In two weeks, the nation’s biggest sports league went from being invincible to not being able to stage a press conference without embarrassing itself.
But if sponsor outrage and financial repercussions are what it takes for the NFL and its teams to act, that’s at least better than no action at all.
