Plaxico Burress played for the Giants because he was a great wide receiver. He was not a paragon of virtue. Not only could he catch an oddly-shaped ball, but he could take a hard hit. That’s what football players do.
The National Football League has suffered some terrible press this past year, not just in the fact that some of its marquee players did bad stuff, but that Commissioner Roger Goodell appeared tone-deaf in his dealing with it. Pot was serious. Knocking out your girlfriend in an elevator, not so much.
In response to the public uproar, Goodell modified the league’s “Personal Conduct Policy.“ At Volokh Conspiracy, David Post did an epic facepalm:
As I had feared, the NFL’s alternate legal system is a bit of a frightful mess. It applies
(a) to pretty much everyone touching the hem of the NFL’s garment…
(b) to pretty much all conduct 24/7, whether job-related or not…
and (c) whether or not such activity is lawful or unlawful….
Oh, and everyone subject to the policy (a category that includes secretaries in team offices, drivers of team buses, trainers, team statisticians, employees in the NFL Human Resources Department, . . .) has to “to promptly report any matter that comes to their attention (through, for example, victim or witness reports, law enforcement, media reports) that may constitute a violation of this Policy . . . [and] [f]ailure to report an incident will be grounds for disciplinary action.”
The NFL, of course, is not merely a private entity, entitled to make whatever rules it wants as to those in its employ or with whom it does business, but it’s a hybrid entity the likes of which only exists in professional sports. In other words, it plays by its own rules, and the law allows it to do so because it otherwise couldn’t exist. And a world without football would be unthinkable.
Before anyone starts to cry, consider that some of these players are extremely well-paid for their athletic prowess. But for the ability to throw or catch a ball, or perhaps arise from a crouch quickly enough to block a very large fellow who wants to get past them, they would be forced to work ordinary jobs, like the rest of us, for which they would not be paid so handsomely.
Some might find work flipping burgers. Some might not. Why they are paid so well remains a mystery, as it’s not like the NFL teams are competing with silicon valley tech companies for individuals who, were they not a skilled left guard, would invent Mr. Fusion. Most of these players would play for a fraction of their salaries, as it beats praying to someday become the assistant manager at Dairy Queen.
The rules developed by Goodell are, as Post points out, insufferably expansive, demanding that players, hot dog vendors and their second cousins conduct themselves in a way that will never bring opprobrium on Goodell again.
What they do is create a system of plausible deniability, where the commissioner has the tools available to make for an excellent press release to soothe the most angry cries of favoritism for athletes. It’s unclear whether the problem is because they’re athletes, they’re brutes or that they are treated better than the rest of us. Nobody wants to admit they’re jealous, so we hide it behind loftier goals.
Either way, no one can say that Goodell crafted policies that treat athletes (or their second cousins) too kindly. Post sees the long-term consequences of short-term thinking:
I guess there are those who think the world’s a safer and better place with the NFL looking over the shoulders of thousands of people and ready to discipline them if they misbehave, but I am not among them. If you believe that due process will be observed, and that anyone’s interests other than the NFL’s, will be protected by this policy, I respectfully disagree. And a world where employers start to “do more” to help stamp out harmful and improper conduct independent of our criminal and civil legal systems does not strike me as an improvement, and those who are heartened to see the NFL “taking action” here will live to regret it.
Indeed, the idea that employers in general, businesses in general, owe a duty to the public to “stamp out harmful and improper conduct independent of our criminal and civil legal systems” is growing, if not already here. The legal system is held in disdain by many, because it offers protections, called “technicalities,” that let all the bad guys walk away. Ray Rice is one such example, though a particularly poor one for those who care to think about it.
So what if we’ve become “prison nation” while simultaneously no one is getting convicted of anything because the legal system coddles criminals. Asking people to rationalize their ridiculously conflicted irrational beliefs would cause massive headaches, and no one wants to be a headache survivor.
The public will applaud Roger Goodell’s absurdly expansive rules, governed by his whim alone, as a sign that the NFL takes player behavior seriously. And there is nothing wrong with that, as these are guys who are paid a whole lot of money that they would have no chance whatsoever of getting under any other circumstances, and it really isn’t too much to ask that they not commit crimes while doing so.
As for the bulk of players, paid the NFL minimum and left to wander aimlessly for the rest of their abbreviated lives with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, who cares? They had their chance to make the big time and blew it, and they aren’t on the roster anyway. As long as they don’t beat up their girlfriends in elevators with the cameras running, they don’t even exist.
David Post is, of course, right that this appeasement of the public’s cry for retribution from men with inexplicably large hands will prove damaging in the long term, even more so as it gives rise to expectations that every “institution” is obliged to reshape itself to accommodate whatever flavor of behavior pleases the loudest voices, without regard to the rational concerns that it relate to job performance or duties.
But by the time something goes horribly awry with this scheme to quiet the pitchfork-carrying townspeople, Goodell will be sitting in his easy chair with a bust of him on display in Canton, Ohio. As for all the other employers and employees, they’re on their own.
There has always been something galling about people who blithely dismiss such concerns by stating that being a professional athlete is a “privilege”, since they are “getting paid to play a child’s game,” as though players were getting millions of dollars just for showing up once a week to toss the pigskin around. While it is a game to us, the viewers, it is a job, a trade, a career for the players, who hone their bodies and skills in order to play that game on Sunday, all the while assuming an enormous risk of severe, potentially permanent injury or disability.
Would such people be willing to accept such heightened scrutiny at their work if we were to describe their particular line of work in such minimalist terms? “You get paid thousands of dollars just to show up and type on your keyboard for a couple of hours a day, so your boss should be able to suspend you or withhold your pay if, in his or her ultimate discretion, your legal, non-work-related activities on your own time he or she finds distasteful.” Perhaps not.
I am also curious which Hall of Fame, exactly, is located in Caton, Ohio. I hear nearby Canton has a nifty football one.
You are clearly more familiar with Ohio than I am. I defer.
If a top football player was paid, say, $150k a year, would the expectations be the same? Probably. Money is one piece; hero worship is another. If they like the adoration, the have no cause to complain that people expect them to be the hero they think they are. So really, the problem is our unreasonable expectations combined with their unfortunately ordinary wrongdoing. They’re not perfect. Neither are we.
“Would such people be willing to accept such heightened scrutiny at their work if we were to describe their particular line of work in such minimalist terms?”
“Such people” have elected representatives who have enacted (in 49 states) at-will employment and (I don’t recall exactly what number of states, but it’s in the high 40s) failed to pass statutes protecting employees from discharge for lawful off-duty conduct. 93% of “such people” work in nonunion workplaces. From a labor law perspective, the only thing remarkable about the NFL’s “off-duty conduct policy” is that the league has actually managed to get a union to acquiesce in it.
In short: Call John Q. Public an ignoramus if you wish, but don’t call him a hypocrite.
One more observation. There are legions of historical examples of employers using employment status as a club to beat down dissent at odds with prevailing social orthodoxy– the most obvious being the McCarthy blacklists, but you can find examples of employers (say) ordering their employees to vote for particular presidential candidates, on pain of termination if the wrong candidate wins, going back to the McKinley/William Jennings Bryan era. This is not news, except perhaps in the sense that this time it’s conservatives’ ox getting gored. If you believe the rapid-fire shitcanning of employees for political reasons having nothing to do with their quality of work “prove[s] damaging” to society at large, then start advocating for change in the relevant law.
Antitrust law-anarchy. Hasn’t it already taken root?
Meh.
Might be a steady idea to examine the “guilds”.
But…