MICHAEL GREY

Grey Area: A week to forget — and learn from — for the NFL

Sep 18, 2014, 10:05 AM | Updated: 10:14 am

Arizona's Jonathan Dwyer became the latest NFL player to be implicated in a domestic-violence incident when he was arrested Wednesday. (AP)

(AP)

Worst. Week. Ever.

I honestly have no idea where the avalanche of bad news currently piling up on the NFL’s front door is going to end, but it’s not a stretch to say this was the worst week ever for the league. In a matter of just days, so much bad news has occurred that I’ve already lost track of the original scandal – something about a video tape that may or may not have been seen by someone in the commissioner’s office or something – and we’ve all been inundated with the type of reprehensible conduct you would only expect to see on a late-night HBO series.

The Ray Rice video sequel has suddenly tipped awareness against a league that has a far too long and storied history of ignoring the transgressions of its players. Making matters worse were the pending cases like that of the Panthers’ Greg Hardy, who was playing after being convicted of domestic violence, and the growing stack of arrests of San Francisco’s Ray McDonald (striking a woman), Minnesota’s Adrian Peterson (striking a child) and Arizona’s Jonathan Dwyer (both).

Worst of all is the fact that the collection of billionaires that run the place seem so clueless as to what to do about it. Not until some major marketing sponsors rattled the leagues cage did any of the owners seem to take it seriously. Gross incompetence has given way to wild and fluctuating reactions all over the league as the teams involved try to calculate how to save face (and by face I mean money).

Why is this so hard to figure out? If a player in the NFL has a history of violence off the field, he shouldn’t have a future on it. Period.

When a player is arrested, indicted or charged in a case involving assault of any kind he should be deactivated – with pay – and allowed to resolve his legal issue(s). Incentivize quick resolutions by taking the player off the field and allow those exonerated immediate re-admission to their team. Due process is for the legal world, playing football is not a Constitutionally-protected right and it’s high time the NFL recognized the difference.

Eventually knowing the risks of losing a player to legal issues – even if temporarily – will work its way into scouting and teams will do far more to ensure that they’re not bringing potential felons into their locker rooms. The guys that violate are shown the door, fewer players that will violate get to the league in the first place and the NFL could actually start living by the moral code to which it claims to adhere. There’s no way to eliminate bad behavior completely but the NFL has to recognize that a football player, team or game is not as important as resolving these transgressions.

Maybe it was the video of Rice knocking his fiancé unconscious. Maybe it was the photos of an injured 4-year-old boy. Or maybe it was just time but the NFL is on the clock to make some serious and lasting changes.

If we’ve learned nothing else this week, it’s that not even the mighty NFL is more important than doing the right thing.

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