The NFL says rape and child/spousal abuse are extreme enough for them - and I agree.Originally Posted by pbmax
I agree that suspension with pay does negatively impact the player, but it is hardly adequate enough punishment to count as "time served" for these types of issues in the event of a legal finding of guilt - regardless of whether the legal system deems whipping a 4-year old child to the point of bleeding is a class A felony or simple misdemeanor. The issue for the league is the extent to which the situation risks blowing up in the media - and therefore in its face - if it doesn't act. And then if given the need for action, what is the least bad option among the slew of bad ones.
Waiting for the justice system to run its course is not a viable option at all, and taking the time to perform its own due diligence may not be either depending on the profile of the player and/or the purported crime. Either of those choices only exacerbates the public relations nightmare when it is put in these situations. Once awakened, the public won’t wait for due diligence – particularly by the global billion-dollar, market-fixing conglomerate. They not only won’t pay attention long enough to withhold judgment, but by definition the public doesn’t trust them in the first place. As a society, we're hungry to dis the NFL at any opportunity. Too rich, too powerful, too expensive. We'll pay it anyway, but bitch about it all day long while we eat up what they offer.
Immediate action - even if only a forced paid vacation - is necessary and warranted for the league to minimize the cost to it by issues that elicit such strong emotional public reaction (woman/child abuse) that quickly graduate from the local sports pages to the national nightly and weekly news - or perhaps worse yet - as was a potential risk in this case - becoming the dominant party-talk issue at all the Super Bowl parties throughout the world.
The lesser of the evils (suspension with pay vs. wait and risk widespread public perception of inaction/distrust/”not caring” about women, children among a bunch of powerful violence-feeding barbarians/etc.) is pretty clear in my view. Hardcore fans like you guys who are engaged enough to concern themselves with performance/workout bonuses and whether the NFL has any obligation to perform due diligence in the first place (it doesn’t - unless agreed to by contract) are one in a million relative to the short-attention-span, judgment-rushing, women and children-loving, Super Bowl watching - public at-large. If the league doesn’t do something quickly, it might as well have raped the women and whipped the kids itself in the minds of the buying public.
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