The Cowardice of Roger Goodell

I wasn’t planning to write anything about the NFL’s recent troubles off the field. There has been more than enough written on the subject, and I didn’t feel like adding another sanctimonious diatribe to the internet. I want my blog to focus on what’s taking place on the field, not what a few players are doing off of it. But in the days since the indictment of Adrian Peterson—one of my favorite players of all time—it has been difficult to turn my mind away from the issues dominating conversation around the league. I had to get my thoughts out in the open, so here they are. If you don’t feel like reading this, I don’t blame you. I’m writing this for myself, not for any of my readers.

Let me start by getting one thing out in the open: I think that all of this has been blown out of proportion. The crimes committed were horrible, but I don’t buy the widely held notion that this is a leaguewide issue. The NFL does not have a domestic violence problem. Society has a domestic violence problem, and the NFL is being held up for everyone to unleash their rage against. The rate of domestic violence among NFL players is lower than among average Americans, and the recent spate of incidents is not an outlier from years past. The simple reality is, if you gather together two thousand random people and shine the spotlight on them, you will wind up with similar incidents of crime to what we are seeing currently in the NFL.

But the NFL isn’t just another part of society. These players stand in the spotlight in a way normal people simply don’t, and because of their notoriety we look to them to set examples for the rest of society. To find evidence of the league’s influence we need only to look at what happened following the emergence of the Ray Rice video. Several domestic violence hotlines reported a sharp increase in calls in the week following Rice’s release by the Ravens. As badly as the NFL bungled that situation, there was still some good that came out of it.

The league has received a lot of criticism over the past couple weeks for failing to properly handle the incidents of violence among their players. This criticism is patently unfair—not because they handled the situation well, but because they never had a chance to handle it the right way. Society as a whole still doesn’t know how to punish people guilty of these offenses. Accusations of domestic violence drip through our court system like water through a leaky roof. People who have spent their entire lives studying criminal justice still can’t construct a system capable of properly punishing people guilty of these crimes. Why would anyone expect an organization of sports bureaucrats to handle it better?

A two game suspension was not a reasonable punishment for Ray Rice, but to their credit the league office realized this and made changes in response to the public outcry. They issued a new policy on domestic violence, clearly defining a six game penalty for a first time offense and a lifetime ban for any ensuing violations. There were still plenty of people who found problem with this policy, but it was a clear message from the NFL that they knew they had made a mistake and that they were trying to rectify the situation. It is still unfortunate that they weren’t able to get things right the first time around, but I don’t think they received the proper credit for their willingness to implement change.

But there remains one major problem that the league hasn’t taken steps to address: Roger Goodell. Ever since he ascended to the position of Commissioner of the NFL, Goodell has made it clear that one of his main goals is cracking down on the league’s off the field issues. Under the personal conduct policy he established himself as the sole arbiter of punishment, deciding the weights of fines and lengths of suspensions for every incident that came before him. He did this without oversight, without consulting people properly qualified for the task. Yet for the first few years, everything went smoothly. He handed down punishments, and he reaped all the adulation from the public. He set himself up as the only person to receive credit, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that he received all the blame when the system finally collapsed.

Discipline in a sporting league is a difficult problem. The vast majority of NFL fans are Americans, instilled with the American value of due process. They have been told since birth that everyone is innocent until proven guilty and that everyone deserves their day in court. But recent years have seen a trend away from that, as victim’s advocacy groups have grown in number and influence to combat crimes that are often difficult to punish under traditional due process. In cases like sexual assault and domestic violence, it is often the word of the victim against the word of the accused. Without any further evidence, we cannot presume that the accused is lying, thus putting us against the victim. It is a no win situation, one that consistently leads to horrific crimes going unpunished.

The courts fail in these cases, but fortunately the NFL is not bound by the same principles of due process. Goodell established quickly that there needed to be no legal proof of guilt to earn punishment from the league. Adam Jones missed an entire season despite never being convicted of a crime. Ben Roethlisberger was suspended four games despite never even being arrested or charged. This made plenty of people uncomfortable, but it was this sort of decisive action that won Goodell the praise of many within the media and the public.

Goodell’s willingness to cast aside traditional notions of justice led to his rise, and now it has caused his fall. The moment he made it clear he was willing to step across a line the courts weren’t able to, he opened himself up to criticism every time he refused to cross another line. It wasn’t just enough to suspend the players. They needed to be suspended immediately, before the courts weighed in on the matter. Ray Rice’s suspension wasn’t harsh enough, so he needs to be suspended again. And at last he gave into the pressure, doubling up on Rice and giving him an indefinite suspension on top of the two games he had already been suspended.

This is where he ran into trouble. This is a classic case of double jeopardy, another action not permitted to the courts. But it is also prohibited under the NFL collective bargaining agreement, and the NFLPA did not take long to file a grievance to prevent this precedent from being established. In all likelihood they will win this appeal, Rice's suspension will be voided, and it will be another black eye for the Commissioner and the league.

By now Goodell has lost all the credibility he won from the public. He has screwed up every step of the Rice affair, and it will only get worse as the appeal works its way through the system. The media has turned against him, and the only appropriate course would be for him to step aside or for the owners to cast him out. But there is too much money at stake for that to happen, so he has been stuck as the face of a league that is trying to hide from the public.

Goodell knows his credibility is gone, but he still seems to believe there is some way for him to get it back. He thinks that this will all blow over, that he’ll be able to lay low for a few weeks and let people forget and forgive. He cancelled his appearance at the opening of the new 49ers stadium. He gave no press conferences until earlier today. He has retreated into hiding, hoping the games will distract people from his incompetence.

It might have worked. In fact, it probably would have worked had it not been for the Adrian Peterson situation. Earlier this summer one of Peterson’s children was visiting him in Texas when Peterson decided to discipline him by striking him with a switch. This isn’t illegal under Texas law, or under the laws of several other states. The indictment only came because Peterson went overboard, accidentally causing more serious injuries than he intended.

This case wasn’t as cut and dry as Rice’s, but it was still an excellent opportunity for Goodell to try to win back some of the support he had lost. Peterson admitted that he had struck the child and caused the injuries, so there was no question about his guilt to justify delaying the punishment. It wasn’t the same scenario addressed under the league’s new domestic violence policy, but it wouldn’t have been difficult to interpret that policy to include violence against children. Goodell could have come out, suspended Peterson for six games without pay, and shown everyone that the league was still capable of disciplining its players.

Instead, he’s done nothing. He’s said nothing. Roger Goodell, the Commissioner of the league and the ultimate decider of justice among NFL players, hid like a coward when he was needed most. He remained out of the picture, and he allowed the public’s attention to shift away from him. When it became clear that the league itself was not going to do anything to punish these players, the public turned their eyes on their respective teams to mete out punishment.

It should surprise no one that the Vikings failed. There is a reason the league has handled disciplinary issues in the past rather than leaving it to the teams. The league has no stakes in the fates of individual players and the fates of individual teams. They are capable of impartial judgment, without worrying about the consequences affecting them. This isn’t the case on the team level. As I discussed on Wednesday, Vikings General Manager Rick Spielman is on the hot seat this season. He needs the team to show some progress if he wants to keep his job for next year, progress that becomes significantly tougher with the absence of his best player. After their disastrous defeat against the Patriots, who expected the Vikings to keep Peterson inactive? Who honestly thought the Vikings management would risk their own necks for the sake of doing what the league was too scared to do?

Even after the Vikings announced they had activated Peterson, the league did nothing. They let the team take all the blame, expecting them to shove themselves further onto the sword they had already fallen on. Of course, there was only so much the Vikings could do. Teams can only suspend their players for a maximum of four weeks, a punishment that would never fly with the public. They could keep Peterson inactive, but that would eat up one of their 53 roster spots, putting them at a competitive disadvantage for the rest of the year. The only other option was cutting him, a move with consequences far greater than the Vikings wanted to deal with.

Eventually, the Vikings did find a solution. They tracked down an obscure rule under the NFL policies allowing a player to be suspended indefinitely with pay in the case of legal matters. They initiated contact with the league offices, and they had Peterson placed on this list, likely for the rest of the season. The laughable part of this is that a player can only be put on this list by the Commissioner, yet Goodell still hasn’t spoken on the matter. He punished Peterson, and he took no credit for it because he knew the public would never again buy anything with his name on it. In doing so he hung the Vikings out to dry, letting them bear the brunt of the public’s scorn and leaving them no choice to hold their best player out for eight games more than he would have faced under the policies of the league that were established less than one month ago.

The media has managed to turn the public against Roger Goodell, stripping him of all the credibility they gave him at the beginning of his tenure. Some of this is deserved, some if it isn’t. But it is clear right now that the league cannot function while Goodell is in charge. The reason he needs to step down isn’t moral, it’s practical. We can’t afford any more messes like what happened with Adrian Peterson. Someone needs to be in charge, and that cannot be Goodell any longer.