Adrian Peterson fiasco proves NFL only cares about its bottom line
Once again the NFL has proven that it will virtually ignore things like domestic violence and child abuse, but mess with its profits and that’s where the league draws the line.
While you were sleeping early Wednesday morning, the Minnesota Vikings reversed course on Adrian Peterson once again and placed him on the NFL’s Exempt/Commissioner’s Permission list until his child abuse case is resolved. The ruling bars him from all team activities for the foreseeable future.
Peterson’s case will likely not be finished until sometime in 2015, which means he won’t play for the Vikings this season. The franchise’s decision to shelve its best player came less than two days after it decided to reinstate him. The Vikings made him inactive for their Week 2 game against the New England Patriots after the abuse accusations surfaced.
For those who aren’t aware, Peterson was indicted for child abuse by a grand jury in Texas last week. The incident reportedly occurred when Peterson whipped his four-year-old son with a “switch” (basically a tree branch) leaving bruises on his back, open wounds on his legs and cuts to his scrotum. The child also had defensive wounds on his hands, most likely because he was a four-year-old kid being beaten by a professional football player.
On Monday it came to light that Peterson had another child abuse claim filed against him in 2013 when he beat another of his children. This time the incident left the boy with a scar on his forehead. But in a text conversation with the child’s mother Peterson blamed the boy for that, saying “Be still n take ya whooping he would have saved the scare (scar). He aight.”
His level of compassion for his injured child really warms your heart, doesn’t it?
Soon after Peterson was reinstated, Radisson suspended its sponsorship deal with the Vikings. Nike was then quick to pile on as it stopped selling Peterson jerseys in Minneapolis. Anheuser-Busch later issued a statement condemning the NFL’s handling of recent off-field incidents.
After all of that happened, the Vikings took their time, evaluated the very reasonable outrage coming from all corners and essentially suspended Peterson indefinitely. While some will applaud the franchise for doing the right thing – however belatedly – it is clear the team had no intention of being without its best player and biggest draw until financial pressure was brought to bear.
More than a sports league, the NFL is a gigantic business and people like Roger Goodell and Vikings owners Zygi and Mark Wilf only understand two things: profits and losses. While minor annoyances like the welfare of the public and the league’s players go virtually unnoticed thanks to the warped worldview of the league, as soon as the bottom line takes a hit, the NFL acts, often with Usain Bolt-like speed.
The NFL covered up the link between concussions and serious, long-term brain injuries for almost two decades. In doing so, the league put the long-term health of every player that donned a uniform at risk. But the NFL refused to act or admit a link until public pressure had grown to enormous proportions. I have always thought that Junior Seau’s suicide was the straw that broke the camel’s back in that regard. After Seau’s death, the league could no longer deny what the general public had known for years.
How about Ray Rice? The NFL suspended him two games for violently beating his then-fiancee Janay Palmer in the elevator of an Atlantic City casino. We have all seen the disturbing footage of Rice dragging her from the elevator from February.
Goodell met with Rice, heard his story and either decided not to pursue video footage from inside the elevator, or did see the tape and has since lied about it . The commissioner then suspended Rice for just two games, which garnered almost universal outrage from the public. But he stuck to that suspension as being just and fair, until footage from inside the elevator leaked to the public. Once that happened, Goodell and the Baltimore Ravens both did what they should have done months before and cut ties with Rice.
Neither of those moves would have happened without the possibility of financial loss for the league. There was zero urgency for the NFL to protect its players or show that it was disgusted by domestic violence until the public was so sickened that it had a chance to impact the league’s bottom line.
Maybe we’re the problem. Maybe the league’s fans and the media covering the NFL need to be the ones changing. We can be disgusted by all of this, but on Sundays during the season there we are, watching the games, wearing jerseys and cheering on our teams. We play fantasy football and write columns about trivial things like whether or not a quarterback was ever elite. Meanwhile, the NFL turns a blind eye to the danger its players face, the abuse of women and children and refuses to do anything about what is by dictionary definition a racial slur being plastered across television screens nationwide.
The NFL’s franchises split $6 billion in revenue in 2013. Maybe it’s time we put a dent in the league’s bottom line. Maybe it’s time we started calling the league, its players and owners out on the horrible things they’ve done. We should hold them to a higher standard than we currently do. If they’re going to survive off of our hard-earned money, we should demand they clean up their act. We need to take a principled stand for what’s right, because lord knows they wont.
We need to change, because if we don’t, Goodell and co. have no reason to. If we stand by and do nothing, it makes us just as guilty as them.
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