Major college and professional sports are presented to us by the leagues, the schools and their broadcast partners as noble competitions that distinguish the emotionally tough from the emotionally indomitable. While that is often an element of the games, what characterizes every single major sports contest is the pursuit of money, and ever more of it.
Money underlies the raging hypocrisies that gird our most popular sports today. Let's look at the big one:
1. The NCAA -- A fraud wrapped in a lie engulfed in a sham. The so-called "student athletes" competing in major college football and basketball are often functionally illiterate young men forced to support their sponsors' lies about high school "graduations" and class "attendance" at major American research universities-- until the moment they are released to seek recompense for their labors. Everyone involved in the games -- except the NCAA, of course -- refers to their trade in work terms, such as coaches demanding that players "do their jobs." For this, athletes from low-income families not only get nothing of value (a university education is worthless to someone at a fifth-grade reading level) but are prohibited from earning income by working side jobs. Heck, they can't even get a free ride home from a coach or a fan.
2. The NFL and domestic violence -- Beat your girlfriend mercilessly behind closed doors; serve a short suspension and then sign a lucrative contract. Punch your now-wife once on video and earn the endless enmity of humankind, not to mention an effective lifetime ban from the game. And how about the NFL puking all over itself on the issue, initially all-but dismissing the incident, then over-reacting and violating the policy it had literally just written.
3. Hoopla about the NBA (and NHL, among those who care) regular seasons -- which are as meaningful as clown candidate policy pronouncements. Here are the conference playoff seedings of the last seven Stanley Cup Champions -- 4-6-1-8-3-2-4. Media coverage of these games would have you believe that teams are straining to win every contest down the stretch for the highest seed possible, when in fact they are trying to avoid strains so that their players are healthy for the two-month marathon that actually determines the champion.
4. The brainless patriotism attending the Olympics, World Cup, Rider Cup and Davis Cup -- Nothing swells our USA pride like millionaire professionals from the States defeating amateur Angolan hoopsters. Take that, ISIS!
5. Our varied responses to cheating in different sports -- In NASCAR, if you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'. That was the credo of the most beloved driver ever. In football, we could hardly care less who's juicing. In basketball there's an overt understanding that the rules are more lenient for big stars. But in baseball, the Wrath of God is unleashed upon those who take substances that make them better players.
6. Gambling laws -- After 30+ years of asking, I have yet to hear a coherent, much less convincing, argument supporting the prohibition. It's particularly indefensible that the laws are so gauzy that gambling is actually quite encouraged by law, except when it's not.
7.The anti-geek crowd -- Employing mostly red herring arguments, they dismiss the advances made to baseball analysis that have been adopted by every Major League organization and rely instead on old stats they're comfortable with but were discredited nearly 40 years ago.
8. The geek crowd -- Make no mistake, there's plenty of culpability on that side of the ledger too.The stat guys are starting to learn the algorithm for humility and it's about time. Their differential equations offer a 5% edge in a game where swings come in 20% packages.
Showing posts with label domestic violence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label domestic violence. Show all posts
27 December 2015
09 September 2014
The Question Not Being Asked In the Ray Rice Case
The critical question in the fiasco surrounding Baltimore Ravens' running back Ray Rice is not one of the 46 you've been hearing and reading.
The critical question is: If you were shocked by the video of Rice delivering a knockout punch to his fiancee in the elevator, what the hell is wrong with you?
After all, we already knew that Rice had knocked his fiancee unconscious. That had been established prior to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's laughably tone-deaf two-game suspension.
So what did you think happened in that elevator? That Rice kissed his wife too exuberantly?
What's shocking is not that Rice's vicious punch was unusual but that it was so utterly mundane. That is what domestic abuse looks like. Did people really not know that?
In fact, Rice's abuse was relatively benign in the world of domestic abuse. After all, it consisted of a single blow, not a sustained attack.
Moreover, the release of video that vividly portrays Rice's violence primarily diminished the reputation of others, not of the football player himself. We knew what we had there -- or should have -- even without visual evidence.
The reactionary responses of Roger Goodell and the Baltimore Ravens have swathed them both in ignominy. What is eminently clear is that the league and the team are not concerned about the rampant domestic violence perpetrated by their employees but are hypocritically reacting (or pre-acting) to the ignorant public outrage they correctly expected the video would incite. (Ignorant not because outrage is unwarranted but because it was warranted absent the video.)
Remember, this is video that the league and the team either did or should have had possession of and could have obtained with little effort. Which means they either ignored it when it was known only to a handful of people or willfully avoided its acquisition knowing full well how poorly it would reflect on the game.
These are the same Ravens who welcomed back their star with open arms during the exhibition season. This is the same commissioner who imposed the same sanction on a violent criminal that he imposes on gentlemen who smoke a joint during their off-hours -- but only if it's their first offense.
And this is the same public, at least in Baltimore, that gave Rice a standing ovation when he returned to the field. A standing ovation. Nothing has changed since, except that those fans can no longer rationalize to themselves that it was just a family squabble.
To add stupid to liar, Goodell violated his own newly established penalty matrix for domestic violence, established just a week prior. Goodell had prescribed a six-game suspension for ordinary domestic violence not involving a child or a pregnant woman. This is the definition of ordinary abuse, yet Goodell suspended Rice indefinitely, with the strong suggestion that the punishment will last all year.
This is one of those cases where everyone even tangentially involved has rolled in the mud. Rice is a thug, Goodell a liar and a hypocrite, the Ravens the same, the fans boorish and self-centered, Ravens' coach John Harbaugh a mendacious, self-indulgent creep, and so on. I'm pretty sure Geraldo Rivera looks bad in all of this, though who would notice.
There's another domestic violence case on Goodell's docket, because NFL players can't go two weeks without beating the women in their thrall. There's no video on this one, at least as far as we know, so let's see how the league handles it. Nothing Goodell does will mollify anyone paying attention. He's already made such a hash of his own system that there is no longer any possibility of fairness or consistency.
The critical question is: If you were shocked by the video of Rice delivering a knockout punch to his fiancee in the elevator, what the hell is wrong with you?
After all, we already knew that Rice had knocked his fiancee unconscious. That had been established prior to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's laughably tone-deaf two-game suspension.
So what did you think happened in that elevator? That Rice kissed his wife too exuberantly?
What's shocking is not that Rice's vicious punch was unusual but that it was so utterly mundane. That is what domestic abuse looks like. Did people really not know that?
In fact, Rice's abuse was relatively benign in the world of domestic abuse. After all, it consisted of a single blow, not a sustained attack.
Moreover, the release of video that vividly portrays Rice's violence primarily diminished the reputation of others, not of the football player himself. We knew what we had there -- or should have -- even without visual evidence.
The reactionary responses of Roger Goodell and the Baltimore Ravens have swathed them both in ignominy. What is eminently clear is that the league and the team are not concerned about the rampant domestic violence perpetrated by their employees but are hypocritically reacting (or pre-acting) to the ignorant public outrage they correctly expected the video would incite. (Ignorant not because outrage is unwarranted but because it was warranted absent the video.)
Remember, this is video that the league and the team either did or should have had possession of and could have obtained with little effort. Which means they either ignored it when it was known only to a handful of people or willfully avoided its acquisition knowing full well how poorly it would reflect on the game.
These are the same Ravens who welcomed back their star with open arms during the exhibition season. This is the same commissioner who imposed the same sanction on a violent criminal that he imposes on gentlemen who smoke a joint during their off-hours -- but only if it's their first offense.
And this is the same public, at least in Baltimore, that gave Rice a standing ovation when he returned to the field. A standing ovation. Nothing has changed since, except that those fans can no longer rationalize to themselves that it was just a family squabble.
To add stupid to liar, Goodell violated his own newly established penalty matrix for domestic violence, established just a week prior. Goodell had prescribed a six-game suspension for ordinary domestic violence not involving a child or a pregnant woman. This is the definition of ordinary abuse, yet Goodell suspended Rice indefinitely, with the strong suggestion that the punishment will last all year.
This is one of those cases where everyone even tangentially involved has rolled in the mud. Rice is a thug, Goodell a liar and a hypocrite, the Ravens the same, the fans boorish and self-centered, Ravens' coach John Harbaugh a mendacious, self-indulgent creep, and so on. I'm pretty sure Geraldo Rivera looks bad in all of this, though who would notice.
There's another domestic violence case on Goodell's docket, because NFL players can't go two weeks without beating the women in their thrall. There's no video on this one, at least as far as we know, so let's see how the league handles it. Nothing Goodell does will mollify anyone paying attention. He's already made such a hash of his own system that there is no longer any possibility of fairness or consistency.
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