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The NFL CAN do wrong

By AJKaufman, Section NFL
Posted on Tue Jan 10 2006 at 8:11 PM EST
More on: (all tags)

As football junkies, we plead ignorance to the tribulations of the NFL. Unfairly though, we do not lend such leniency to other sports, especially the NBA.

But wait a minute. While it may feel correct to laud football for its absence of steroids, of "Yankee-Red Sox-Braves" anti-competition and dearth of tattoo-infested players, facts will oftentimes tell a much different story.

A cursory glance at the headlines on nfl.com from December 16 shows the NFL in a different, less-elucidated light: "Vikings players charged with lewd and lascivious behavior,"  "Former Raider Darrell Russell killed while drag racing at 100 MPH in city streets," "Saints players given hazard pay," "Fans wear opposing team's colors and plan 'Millen Man March' in Detroit to protest Lions GM..."

Last I checked, the "gangsta" NBA, unlike the NFL, had little trouble finding a home for their New Orleans franchise in Oklahoma City, which is supporting the team en masse (unlike the nomad Saints in fanless Baton Rouge and San Antonio) , fewer players each year had legal issues, and not since Bobby Phills nearly a decade ago, had a player been killed due to his petulant behavior in a car.

No one denies that sports have become businesses. This is an accepted fact that the purist in all of us has to come to grips with in 2006. However, the pedestal that the "hard-working, blue collar" NFL stands upon seems to not only be wobbly, but perhaps undeserving as well.

While NFL gurus will correctly point to the comeuppance of the Bears, Bengals and Seahawks from the doldrums of just a few years past, they plead ignorance to the perpetual plight of the Cardinals, Lions, Bills, Browns and now apparently, the expansion Texans. It is rudimentary to ignore evidence to the contrary to prove your point over any issue, in sports or life.

While Major League Baseball may be a prime example of the haves and have nots, and in the NBA, only Detroit, San Antonio, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston have won titles in the past 20 years, the "parody" in the NFL is not unchallenged. A closer look reveals that oft-maligned baseball has actually seen 13 different franchises win titles since 1986 while the NFL has only seen ten.

Now consider the NBA's Ron Artest. A bad guy? Maybe. While his on and off court actions may be appalling in a Latrell Sprewell way, he is only one man of 300 in the NBA, and what of the charity work he does in urban Indianapolis and back in his former hometown of Queens, New York? NBA players are just as giving off the court as NFL players. Maybe if the NFL players wore sleeveless shirts, displaying THEIR tattoos, people would see them in a more "exposed" light.

We criticize Artest's conduct, but either quickly forget (or glamorize) the deleterious actions of NFL's Terrell Owens, Randy Moss and Ricky Williams. Further, we continue to vilify the mostly African-American NBA as a league of thugs with unrestrained incontinence. As ESPN Radio's Colin Cowherd eloquently opined, "the perception of the NBA is the reality of the NFL." So true and so telling.

One could theorize ad infinitum as to the validity in these claims, but as the NFL capitalizes on a sports nation who continues to injudiciously subscribe to the "NFL can do no wrong" mentality, it is only fair to publicize the too-seldom-seen soft underbelly of the NFL fortress.

Even if we forgive the NFL for their discretions every seventh day, can't we hold them a tad accountable for their transgressions on a few of the other six days of the week? So far, the answer from the fans and the media is to pardon the NFL because it seems to be "in the country's best interest" to present a united front in favor of the NFL's dominance. (If only America could rally around our country's military efforts in similar fashion.)

Nonetheless, in life, politics and obviously sports, citizens pick and choose issues upon which to dwell and linger.  Tossed aside are the insidious issues that might tarnish what we like (in this instance, the negativities surrounding the NFL), while we come down hard on what don't like (then NBA and its image). Selectivity is a wonderful tool.

To again quote Colin Cowherd on this topic, "We are a nation of NFL freaks so we don't care."

That is unfortunate, because our freakish nature should be fair enough to treat each American sport with the same degree of skepticism and scrupulousness.