What to do about the NFL?

Last Saturday, I wrote about the ever-widening Ray Rice scandal and how the NFL's handling of that and other domestic violence cases is very similar to how the League covered up for years the long-term damage done by traumatic brain injuries. Today, both Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti and head coach John Harbaugh issued statements denying some of the allegations of ESPN's "Outside the Lines" report. One of the two reporters on the story, Don Van Natta, Jr., a multiple Pulitzer Prize winner, said that he and ESPN stand by the story. Van Natta is expected to file a written response to the Ravens' denials soon.

In his public comments, Bisciotti claimed that the source for the ESPN story was Ray Rice and his associates. However, Van Natta claims that he and reporter Kevin Van Valkenburg interviewed more than 20 sources over 11 days. Given the level of detail in the ESPN report, it's inconceivable that the network would have run the story without independent confirmation. Rice and his associates had to be considered biased sources, so running their claims without independent confirmation would have been foolhardy (except for those situations where Rice was the only one in a meeting who was willing to comment on it, such as the closed-door meeting between Ray and Janay Rice and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.)

If the ESPN report is all, or even just substantially true, serious reform needs to happen within the NFL, the Baltimore Ravens, and possibly, even in the Baltimore City and County State Attorneys' offices. Here are some practical steps that can be taken:

• Commissioner Roger Goodell and the entire senior staff of the NFL should be fired, and replaced with a new Commissioner with a) An impeccable reputation, and b) No current personal or professional connection with any NFL team owner. That Commissioner will then appoint the remaining members of the League's top management.
• In an article published today, "New Yorker" staff writer Ben McGrath noted that the NFL is classified as a "nonprofit trade organization" by the IRS--A nonprofit that pays its Commissioner $44 million a year, and that pays its top leadership a significant fraction of the total annual payroll for all the players in the NFL. The IRS should strip the NFL of its nonprofit status, and if the IRS is unwilling or unable to do so, the U.S. Congress should step in and do it.
• The Baltimore State's Attorneys who gave Ray Rice permission to enter a no-jail diversion program usually used for non-violent drug cases, Ravens owner Steve Biscotti and other team executives should be investigated for obstruction of justice, bribery and influence peddling. If Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler is unwilling to take the case or unable to do so because of a conflict of interest, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley should appoint an independent prosecutor.

These are practical steps that the League, the IRS and Maryland's top law enforcers should take to reform the NFL and find out, to the satisfaction of a judge and jury, who actually participated in the decision to give Ray Rice a slap on the wrist for beating his (soon to be) wife. The NFL and its team owners may hope that by spreading enough cash around and letting things stretch out, the entire affair will eventually blow over. Everything eventually blows over--the question is, "What will be left standing when the wind dies down?"

Football: Boxing with more clothes

I've been following the Ray Rice domestic abuse scandal, and ESPN's "Outside the Lines" unit released a damning story on Friday that details a cover-up by top executives and the team owner of the Baltimore Ravens, and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's efforts to avoid seeing the video of Rice hitting his girlfriend (now wife) in the elevator. By the time Goodell met with Rice and now-wife Janay, Baltimore executives believed (or in their words, "assumed") that Goodell had seen the video. Based on that belief or assumption, Rice truthfully told Goodell that he hit and knocked out Janay. My belief is that whether or not Goodell saw the tape, he had enough evidence from Rice's own confession to give him a lifetime suspension.

The abysmal way that the NFL handled the Rice case and other cases of domestic violence is of a piece with how the league handled the impact of brain concussions. For years, the NFL minimized the effect of brain injuries on its players, even as evidence of long-term personality and cognitive changes was piling up, and players with traumatic brain injuries were committing suicide. The doctor who found evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in the brain of deceased former Steelers center Mike Webster was libeled and slandered by the NFL, with the intention of destroying his credibility. The doctor that the NFL appointed to head its own research into traumatic brain injuries was a rhematologist and a physician for the New York Jets with no training in or experience with brain injuries. The researchers under that doctor then proceeded to release 16 studies that claimed that there were no chronic brain injuries that were caused by playing football, and that it was even fine to allow a player who had received a concussion to continue playing in that same game once he'd recovered.

Earlier this year, the NFL settled a lawsuit filed by more than 4,500 former players who claimed that they had suffered long-term damages from concussions they'd received while playing. The NFL set up a $675 million or more fund to pay compensation to injured players, $75 million for baseline testing and $10 million for research and education. However, the NFL was able to avoid having to pay anything to players with neurobehavioral problems unless they can also prove that they have cognitive impairments.

All of this brings me to an inescapable conclusion: The NFL isn't interested in the welfare of its players, nor is it interested in the welfare of its players' families or significant others. Its sole concern is the maintenance and improvement of the financial interests of team owners. My headline made a comparison with boxing. Boxers, like football players, often suffer severe physical injuries, the most visible of which involve the head and brain. Boxers, like football players, have a reputation for violence, both inside and outside their sport. Top boxers, like football players, are paid a lot of money. The fight promoters who stage boxing matches are seen as largely venal people who care only about money and who care about the boxers' welfare only because their fights have to be licensed by a state boxing commission. Boxing has a terrible reputation, but the damage caused by boxing has never been a secret; the term "punch-drunk," defined by Merriam-Webster as "Suffering cerebral injury typically marked by mental confusion, incoordination, and slurred speech and usually resulting from minute brain hemorrhages caused by repeated head blows in boxing," was first used in 1918. Some of the best books and movies about boxing have used the symptoms of CTE in descriptions of boxers' behavior and personalities.

It's become clear to me that under the NFL, football is boxing with more clothes, and team owners are fight promoters with more money. Would you trust that an investigation of a group of boxing promoters being led by two boxing promoters who are part of the group, and being overseen by a former government employee who's being paid by the group of boxing promoters, would be impartial and comprehensive? I doubt it. That's why I have so little trust in the self-examination of the NFL's handling of Ray Rice by two team owners and Robert Mueller.

Update, September 21: The two team owners who are running the investigation of the NFL's handling of the Ray Rice case are John Mara of the New York Giants and Art Rooney II of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Ben Roethlisberger, the Steelers' quarterback, has been accused of sexual assaults twice: In 2008, a former casino host at the Lake Tahoe Harrahs claimed that she had been raped by Roethlisberger. That case was settled out of court with a gag order on both the plaintiff and defendant. Another charge of sexual assault was lodged in March 2010, this time by a student in Georgia. No charges were filed, but the NFL suspended Roethlisberger for six games. However, the suspension was lifted after four games.

Roethlisberger works for Rooney. So far as we know, the Steelers took no action against Roethlisberger as a result of either charge. Mara and Rooney are related by marriage (that's where the actress Rooney Mara gets her name.) Given the Steelers' acceptance of Ben Roethlisberger's behavior, the relationship between Rooney and Mara, and both of their complicity with years of NFL behavior, can we really put any trust into their investigation?