I am tormented by the difficulty in aligning my own moral compass with the various individual scandals which themselves are tormenting the NFL. We have players knocking out their wives in elevators, whacking their children with switches, killing people and still getting statues to them built outside stadiums. It's enough to make the media try to find a villain in all this, and demand that the Commissioner resign forthwith and posthaste (because that will surely remove the scars from Adrian Peterson's child and awaken the unconscious Mrs. Ray Rice).
But I am not tormented by the actions of the players. We have a whole judicial system which was put in place by the Constitution to address such actions, and surely the Atlantic County, NJ Sheriff's office will look at the elevator video and ... OK, maybe they didn't think it was such a bad thing. But it is their job to do so, and it is more than a bit surprising that the venom directed at the Commissioner of the National Football League is not directed at the sheriff.
What does torment me is trying to determine, on the grand scale of right and wrong, the actual role of the NFL in punishing its players for actions that are in no way connected with their actions on the field, in practice or any other milieu associated with their NFL employment. It bothers me because I don't think there's an easy answer, and so the actions of the media in trying to lynch the Commissioner simply don't make sense, at least not yet.
Before we all leap to demand his resignation, can we at least have a national dialogue about what role an employer has when the employee does bad things no his own time? There are two levels even to that:
(1) Does an employer have any basic obligation to punish employees on top of the judicial process?
(2) Does the punished employee have any recourse when such punishment takes place before the judicial process has run its course to at least an initial verdict?
If we set aside for the moment the notion that very public institutions like the NFL could have different standards, I think there is an argument that says that it is essentially (i.e., before "other factors") inappropriate for an employer to take action until a guilty finding is rendered. In the Rice case, if he were a french fry cook at Burger King, as opposed to a running back for the Ravens, he would still be hip-deep in potatoes until a guilty plea or conviction, and even then there might not be a loss of work because the cars going through the drive-up wouldn't know that their salted spuds had been cooked by a convicted wife-puncher. What, pray tell, would be his recourse from Burger King if he were to be fired due to the arrest, but then acquitted?
So why, then, is the NFL being taken to task? For that matter, although union contracts complicate matters, why are not the head-on-the-platter calls being made for Ozzie Newsome, the Ravens general manager, and Rice's actual employer? Is it because our societal iconoclasm demands the highest possible level of sacrificial lamb? What role, actually, reverts to the organization to which the offender's employer belongs?
I don't have the answer, because it's not so black-and-white. What is black-and-white is that the local law enforcement authority looked at all the video, heard the testimony of the punched fiancee-and-now-wife, and that he was indicted in March, but went into an "intervention program" that expunges the arrest if he keeps clean for a year. He was released by the Ravens after the punch-out video was seen (and, in contrast to the Burger King analogy, there was a finding, though the punishment was negligible and expungeable). The NFL has the former head of the FBI investigating, although to what end it isn't clear, and has indefinitely suspended him.
I'm open to anyone explaining what the employer's role is in this case, as long as the commenter will carefully explain the difference between Ray Rice the running back and Ray Rice the fry cook.
And as long as I'm on the subject, someone needs to tell Mrs. Rice that there's a part of this she doesn't get. As willing as she is to absolve her husband of blame (some think she instigated the argument, though nothing warrants striking one's spouse), if he is not severely punished, the broken jaws of some number of future victims are on her head (OK, awkward metaphor apology). Unfortunately, by him avoiding legal action to the extent he did, and her being so forgiving, they have just moved the line on the moral continuum in the wrong direction for an unfortunate number of potential wife-beaters, who will now have less deterrent to assault their spouses. Mrs. Rice, if you don't see that, you don't get it. You need to see that your heavy-handed husband doesn't get off unpunished and stop apologizing for him.
Copyright 2014 by Robert Sutton
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