The NFL We Deserve

In normal times, I would be the last guy to defend Roger Goodell.  The man is a walking due process violation, $44-million-per-year proof that, in America, no level of incompetence is too great to be rewarded.

In normal times, I would be the last guy to defend Jerry Jones.  The man is the McMansion come to life, a billionaire oil baron whose idea of architecture is the Disney World of football stadiums and whose idea of a friend is Chris Christie.

In normal times, I would be the last guy to defend the NFL.  The league spent 20 years trying to convince us that the concussion crisis was fake, then spent the last five trying to convince us that it could be solved by having their officials throw a flag every sixth or seventh time a receiver gets hit in the head going across the middle.

But these are not normal times.  On Friday, Deadspin released a slew of photos showing the aftermath of Cowboys defensive lineman Greg Hardy’s vicious abuse of his former girlfriend in 2014.  Hardy, then with the Panthers, sat out much of last season while the legal process played out.  He then signed with Jones’s Cowboys, was suspended for 10 games, saw his suspension reduced as part of a settlement with the NFL and returned to the field—reminding us, within his first week back, that he is both a great football player and an absolute disgrace of a human being.

The reaction to the photos has been sad but predictable.  Most people want Jones or the NFL to get Hardy off of our TV screens.  A few contrarians are arguing he deserves a second chance, though it seems like maybe we should wait for him to go at least 10 days without making an ass of himself on national TV before we start giving him redemption points.

But both of these reactions start from the premise that we’re a society that cares deeply about violence against women, that we won’t cheer or pay to see domestic abusers play, at least not until they demonstrate that they understand the gravity of their transgressions.  The fact that, as with Ray Rice, we needed to see visual proof of the horror of domestic violence before we applied any serious pressure to the NFL to respond suggests otherwise.

It’s absurd for the league to suspend pot users for longer than wife beaters, but it’s no more absurd than a law that allows us to sentence someone to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for drug dealing.  It’s absurd to treat dog fighting as more socially reprehensible than intimate-partner violence, but it’s no more absurd than the fact that Michael Vick did 18 months in Leavenworth, while Greg Hardy got his record expunged.

I won’t cry for Greg Hardy if he gets cut or suspended.  But let’s get real for a second: Greg Hardy isn’t a football problem.  He’s an America problem.  Roger Goodell, Jerry Jones and the NFL can take him off of TV, but they can’t take him out of our culture.  

That’s on us.