Midnight in the garden of Goodell and evil: why the NFL never learns

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/14/goodell-evil-nfl-bad-news

Version 0 of 1.

The strangest story about an NFL storyline in the summer of 2014 – the summer of domestic violence, illegal and/or performance-enhancing drugs, outright racism, cultural insensitivity and homophobia, and, oh yeah, the inherent brutality of the game itself – was on the website of the NFL Network. It was written by a former New York Times football reporter but in the tone of a news organ from an unusually friendly communist regime. It was about how her boss, Commissioner Roger Goodell, was “doing the right thing going forward” in toughening up the penalties for domestic abuse, after he’d “gotten wrong” a suspension for Ray Rice, the Baltimore Ravens running back, who knocked his fiancée unconscious and dragged her body from a casino elevator.

“It is an admirable effort. But this is not really the time to applaud the NFL.”

The league tried to control, for six months, the story of another star who, like the dog-fighter Michael Vick and the unsolved-murder suspect Ray Lewis, perhaps was not beyond a stage-managed redemption. By the careful script of the NFL, a temporary villain can be even more valuable than a conventional hero. Because if a player misbehaves, the league can suspend him, abandon him or prepare him for a possible comeback – all depending on which story might still be told and profited from. In the National Football League, where a great story – good or evil – is the most valuable commodity, there’s almost always a chance to applaud the bad guy.

Then, this week, inevitably, the celebrity gossip site TMZ released video of Rice and his then-fiancée from within the elevator. Whatever the NFL knew before TMZ, it clearly decided after the video’s release that it could no longer profit from the illusion that Rice was just another flawed character in a bigger storyline. The video forced the NFL to abandon its fantasy that the game and its athletes are somehow divorced from reality. Ray Rice is not at the lowest arc of his and the Ravens’ drama; he is a man who did a monstrous thing to a woman he later married.

But that’s what the NFL is – what it aspires to be and especially what it sells: fantasy. The league exploits the way stories and sports bring us together and lift us up. The NFL sells us a fantasy that athletes are characters, not people, that it’s just a game and also that we are living history – indeed, a history without consequences.

It is no surprise that the NFL’s preferred storylines – of redemption and dueling dynasties (Denver’s Peyton Manning and Tom Brady of New England), of victory against all odds (Seattle’s Russell Wilson) – find a ready audience among Americans. We hear versions of these clichés in everything from Star Wars movies to presidential speeches; even our president’s speeches attempt football metaphors and Star Wars allusions, even if he often fumbles the “mind meld” with America. But we’re hooked long before we turn to the NFL’s vast media network, complete with “insider” reporters and billion-dollar ESPN deals. The story of football, after all, is the story of America: hard work and a little talent can take you to glory, wealth, contentment and maybe even a comeback.

.@NFLNetwork tmrw during #ThursdayNightFootball use #TNFStorylines to interact w/me & ask questions during the game. pic.twitter.com/ejOTnzIrLD

So what happens when the stories turn dark, as they have at a seemingly unprecedented rate over the past six months? Like any huckster who sells you a story and promises it’s free, surely the NFL is about to face a reckoning, right? But if the grim events, rank hypocrisy and legal wrongdoing of this summer and the past few years are any indication, the NFL will just keep working even hard to polish its image, using even the worst kind of bad news to its advantage, to keep professional football firmly in the minds of as many people as possible.

There is the story of Greg Hardy, a defensive end found guilty of domestic abuse in July. His ex-girlfriend’s complaint to the court says he choked her, dragged her by the hair and threw her onto a a couch “covered in assault rifles and/or shotguns”. Greg Hardy played for the Carolina Panthers last Sunday. Ray McDonald, of the San Francisco 49ers, was arrested two weeks ago after his pregnant fiancée showed police bruises on her neck and arms. The NFL Network doesn’t much mention them, and ESPN seems roused only by Ray Rice.

The NFL Network, though it uses all the analyst chatter and deluge of computer effects that ESPN pioneered so well, does not do flashy reporting. It breaks stories in the manner of a press officer, which is what it is. Talking heads talk on TV. Yet it does not shy from controversies, like the league’s response to Michael Sam.

The story of Michael Sam is the story of a man – a real person – who could be the first openly gay athlete to play in the NFL regular season. Understandably, Sam has insisted that the press treat him simply as a football player, and most players seem to treat him as just that. Sam’s courage has made him a sensation, and his jersey is among the year’s top sellers; but as a football player, his size and skills might not be enough to play. He wins from attention, as do those hawking merchandise, foremost among them Jerry Jones, owner of the team with which Sam is currently affiliated, the Dallas Cowboys.

Jones, a 71-year-old billionaire, is to football what Hugh Hefner is to magazines. He knows how to make a buck and has very little shame. In theory, teams really should treat Sam as an athlete alone – but by playing up his story, the league and Sam profit without ever having to play a down. A historic victory for gay athletes could indeed be at hand; the league will make sure it’s also sold.

ICYMI → Cowboys owner Jerry Jones: "NFL didn't ask to sign Michael Sam" → http://t.co/JTOTJLQhXJ pic.twitter.com/3U9ibd5AE3

Looming over all these stories is the shadow cast by the mounting evidence that football riddles young men’s brains until they are paralyzed, depressed and losing their memories. The league has a section of its website devoted to concussion awareness and facts, but it misleadingly titles it “Evolution” and frames it with self-commissioned reports on decreased concussions and histories of how the game has gotten safer – omitting how players have become super-strong, super-fast “bionic men”, in the words of the league’s former commissioner.

At other times, the NFL talks about concussions as if the word alone might make them ill – much has, should and will be written about the league’s appalling response to mounting evidence and former players’ stories. Suicide, and brains described “like an 85-year-old man with Alzheimer’s”. The evidence of concussions’ debilitating consequences is large, and growing, and the stories of destroyed lives and families – impoverished by medical debt and wracked by varied, mutable symptoms – are terrifying and tragic. But the NFL will do whatever it can to promote the falsehood that this is a game without real-life repercussions.

When the NFL reports about itself on concussions or suspensions, it almost always follows the story’s facts with comment from and about the relevant team. How will a drug suspension change offensive schemes? Can the second string hold it together? Can a rival overtake the division leader? What does coach think? If Wes Welker, both recently concussed and suspended for amphetamines, is out this week, who should you start on your fantasy team?

But these athletes are real people who affect real families – men, women and children, despite the NFL’s attempts to craft their images into cartoon heroes and villains, complete with superhero skills and brightly colored tights.

Of course, all professional sports peddle stories and specialize in crisis PR – baseball survived steroids and starts accused wife abusers on the mound, Kobe’s career survived Colorado – but with its own media engine churning out stories, the NFL has perfected the art of turning bad news into good, of evil into forgivable. Rather than stand with its professed principles and let athletes serve the consequences of their choices, the league shirks responsibility even as it exploits stories, expertly doing everything it can to separate the game and its comforting clichés from reality: the NFL protects abusers, presses cash for billionaires and denies that it is destroying human minds. Pro football has never been more of a fantasy than it is right now.