I’m trying to make sense of an email I have gotten. This guy was pretty unhappy with the media and had picked me to vent, as well as probably other people in my business. He had been hitting in The Talk Pod and on the fill in programs I’ve been doing on Talk 910 in the Bay Area. He couldn’t understand why, we the media, and me in particular continued to talk about domestic violence in the NFL. He said that these were a few isolated incidents and that they had been taken care of, and that Ray and Janay Rice were married for goodness sake. And that it, domestic violence I’m assuming he means, goes on all the time in our society.
Well I’m going to answer you publicly. The only question is whether I should be nice, or shout… You have answered your own question, you Neanderthal, without knowing it. I think I’ll be nice and try to explain again.
As we learn more and more about domestic violence in the NFL, we learn we need to do more there. Harry Edwards, the famed, sociologist and consultant to the 49ers for over twenty years, says he warned the league that domestic violence would be the issue that could tarnish the league in years to come. So here we are… years to come is now. He actually sat down with Roger Goodell about eight years ago and repeated himself. Nothing happened. And it appears, Goodell even held on to evidence in the Rice case until the very disturbing videos were made public.
Furthermore, there is a another report saying there have been 56 domestic abuse allegations against NFL players since Goodell became commissioner.
Another report, ESPN, says the arrest rate for domestic violence among NFL players is over 50% higher than the national average.
It is a confluence of power and celebrity, the nature of the game, the lingering affect of concussions and alcohol. Edwards says alcohol, not steroid rage, or any other drugs is a chief cause of abuse issues in the NFL.
When you look at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures that one in three women in the United States have been victim to physical abuse, it is stark and nauseating. When you put in the multiples in the NFL, it is atrocious. It is unacceptable.
What is going to change the paradigm? For the NFL, sponsors, decline in revenue. It started to happen to the NBA Clippers during the Donald Sterling affair. It should happen now. It has already started, it should continue.
This is not a one time, short attention span issue. We live in a world where we watch international atrocities with horror. We have a serious problem within our borders, within one of our favorite pastimes, and within one in three abused women’s lives in our homes.
We cannot stop talking about it. We have to start doing more about it. We need to start helping the abused and those abusers. We need to stop turning the other way. It is not acceptable for partners to physically abuse each other. We can’t stop talking about it and working on it, until it stops……period.
Only that makes sense.
Ed Baxter is a regular contributor to TheTalkPod.com.
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