It’s hard to argue that this past week was not the worst PR week in the history of the NFL. The week started with video of Ray Rice punching his fiancée (now wife) and ended with perhaps the best-known running back in the league charged with child abuse.
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In between those shocking moments, the NFL and commissioner Rodger Goodell continued to step in the PR quagmire with “misstatements” and refuting media reports about who knew what and when with Ray Rice and others.
The National Organization of Women called on Goodell to step down and Greg Hardy’s domestic violence conviction earlier this summer and the furor over the Ray Rice situation got the Carolina Panthers to sit their best defensive player on Sunday.
All of that was just part of the mess that was the past week, and according to Politico.com the league is responding by hiring more outside counselors and advisors. According to the report, the NFL is expected to treat this like they did with the player “health and safety initiative” over the past year.
An NFL official tells POLITICO the moves are part of “doing everything we can to earn the trust of our fans and the community, on and off the field.”
While the effort to tackle this problem is admirable, this smacks of pure desperation from a league with a massive PR and trust problem at the moment. NFL fans aren’t stupid, so it will likely take much more than just a move like this to make a difference in earning that broken trust back.