Amid the images and reports of battered women and children, there may finally be consensus that N.F.L.
games are superfluous, that the standings matter less than the blotter,
bruises and brain scans. But the games go on as scheduled, as if
nothing happened, no matter how far the league veers wildly off script.
There
was a football game last Sunday night that showed, under bright lights,
just how entangled the N.F.L.’s manufactured world of make-believe is
with the hard realities of American life.
The Chicago Bears played the San Francisco 49ers
in a game broadcast nationally in prime time. It was the first
regular-season game at the 49ers’ new Levi’s Stadium, a Silicon Valley
edifice erected 40 miles from San Francisco to the specifications of
corporate deities. In February 2016, it will host the 50th edition of
the Super Bowl..
Spectators
could stroll the Faithful Mile Presented by Safeway, visit the Visa Box
Office, enter Intel Gate A or Toyota Gate F, pass time at the Bud Light
Patio or the Yahoo Fantasy Football Lounge. If a stock ticker could
throw up, it might leave a pile like Levi’s Stadium
The
game attracted a sellout crowd announced at 70,799, many of them paying
hundreds of dollars for the chance to attend while dressed in replica
N.F.L. jerseys of players they did not really know. There were hundreds
of credentialed journalists (many watching from the glass-encased
Verizon Press Level) to convey the ostensible excitement to audiences of
their own. Millions of others watched on television: casual fans,
fantasy leaguers, hard-core gamblers.
The
N.F.L.’s escape from its off-field problems, never as profound as now,
has always been the football stadium, the looking glass of American
culture. That has been part of the playbook for decades. Better than any
other sports league, the N.F.L. proved adept at extinguishing the
flare-ups with a squirt of indignation, a spritz of discipline and a
fire hose of diversion.
And so it was meant to be last Sunday night, amid the usual pomp of patriotism and overdose of testosterone.
But
these problems are different — a wildfire with zero percent
containment. The issue is violence, which is what the league has
packaged and sold as entertainment for decades. Now the violence being
questioned is not just the kind inflicted against other players, on
every single play, though growing evidence and concern over brain damage
haunts and threatens the game’s long-term survival. (Court documents
recently showed that the N.F.L. itself expected nearly a third of its
players — “materially higher” than the general population — to develop long-term cognitive problems.)
What has the N.F.L. reeling now are the violent acts committed by its
players against women and children. The disease of violence is
spreading.
Finally, the usual images of perfect spirals, jarring tackles and
flouncy cheerleaders were no match for a knockout punch in an elevator,
the scars on a child’s back and the clumsy cluelessness of a news
conference in front of a logo-festooned banner.
N.F.L. games are played within a different context now. The opening of
Levi’s Stadium showed us that, and it didn’t matter how much the league
reasonably hoped to disguise its problems behind the facade of grandeur
and the Pavlovian roar of another sellout crowd.
Out trotted San Francisco’s defense, including a starting end named Ray
McDonald. He was arrested at his home on Aug. 31 on suspicion of
assaulting his fiancée. But because McDonald had not been charged in the
case, which was still under investigation, the 49ers reasoned that he
should continue to play, citing due process.
“We’re not going to flinch based on public speculation,” Coach Jim
Harbaugh said. He might have been reading from the N.F.L.’s handbook on
crisis management in the concussion age, circa 2008.
The stance drew sharp rebukes from the likes of Jerry Rice and the
California lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom, San Francisco’s former
mayor. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution
denouncing the team’s handling of the situation. But most of them
probably watched the game anyway.
Among the Chicago players on the other side of the line of scrimmage on
Sunday was receiver Brandon Marshall. No N.F.L. player has such a sordid
string of domestic violence arrests (three) and accusations (roughly a
dozen), but the Bears traded for him two years ago, sure that his
troubles were in the past. Last Sunday, Marshall caught three touchdown
passes in a Chicago victory seen by an estimated 22.2 million on NBC,
just one of the N.F.L’s several contractually connected big-network
partners, along with ESPN, CBS and Fox.
And that is just it. The N.F.L. is buttressed by so many parties with a
stake in its continued success — broadcast partners, corporate sponsors,
local governments, ancillary businesses, betting houses, fantasy
leagues, hundreds of millions of fans — that no amount of exasperation
will topple it.
The N.F.L put itself in this position. But the tougher spot may belong
to all the rest of us, bound to the N.F.L. with the nastiest of knots,
looking for ways to be outraged in practical and meaningful ways.
Think CBS should just walk away? Think cities should kick a team out? Think fans should stop watching?
Think any of that will happen?
Imagine a company like Anheuser-Busch, the parent company of Bud Light,
the official beer of the N.F.L. It released a statement last week saying
it was “disappointed and increasingly concerned by the recent incidents
that have overshadowed this N.F.L. season.”
For the most part, that is how the N.F.L. is being punished, through carefully written statements, a million little paper cuts.
Anheuser-Busch could end its deal with the N.F.L., worth about $200
million a year. It could suspend advertising during its television
broadcasts. It could stop selling beer in the stadiums, take down every
sign, even shutter the Bud Light Patio at Levi’s Stadium.
It will not do any of that. We know that.
A strange thing happened on Monday, though. The Minnesota Vikings
announced that they would reinstate running back Adrian Peterson, mired
in a child abuse case. The announcement came in front of a banner
featuring the logos of the team and the Radisson Hotels chain.
Radisson decided it did not like its name in the background of news
clips involving talk of child abuse. It suspended its sponsorship of the
Vikings. By Wednesday, the Vikings and the N.F.L. had suspended
Peterson indefinitely.
Like Radisson, every stakeholder in the N.F.L., from corporate sponsor
to couch potato, has a vote. But they are probably too many, too
diffused, too ingrained to instantly alter decades of the N.F.L.’s
narcissistic growth.
Really, the best that can be hoped is that the N.F.L. will change — that
it will learn to lead on the topic of violence, on and off its fields
of play, rather than view it as a distraction to be managed through
public relations. Commissioner Roger Goodell’s news conference on
Friday, though, provided little hope that substance would trump style.
The N.F.L. has serious problems. So do we. For now, the N.F.L. wins
because it is so ingrained in our culture that we cannot extricate
ourselves, at least not quickly and meaningfully. The hope is that the
N.F.L. views that not with gleeful greed, but with humility and
responsibility. The only real expectation is that the games will go on.
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