These past two weeks have reminded me of the place that professional sports hold in the American heart. Not a day has gone by in which Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson or Roger Goodell has not been mentioned.
The actions and inactions of these men have single-handedly opened up the national conversation about domestic violence: its victims and its perpetrators and the complex interactions between the two. These men have also sparked conversations about a league’s obligations to police its employees and the general violence that pervades some of this country’s most quintessential pastimes.
It is my hope that some good can come of this ugliness, because I know for certain that we as a nation will too soon shift our gaze away from these heinous indiscretions and focus back on the games themselves. We will once again be too lost in the captivating violence of men throwing themselves headlong at one another to entertain even a second thought about who they really are. And to so easily revert to this simplistic worshipping of professional athletes is to once again pull the wool over our eyes.
Instead, we should try to remember that there is a difference between Ray Rice the football player and Ray Rice the man. We should never again see the player alone as a model for how we ought to live our lives, because we cannot simply discard the question of his character. We should demand that the leagues governing these men hold similarly realistic views of their employees, especially in light of all that has transpired in these past two weeks. Because Charles Barkley and Nike were right 21 years ago in the famous ad campaign in which they proclaimed that athletes are not role models. And that is something that fans and leagues alike need to start treating as canon.
The Nike ad campaign served as an official announcement of Barkley’s long-held belief that athletes should not be portrayed as role models. Rejecting the NBA’s notion of his public role off the court, Barkley believed, “All our role models don’t have to be jocks and entertainers,” as he said in an interview in January. This ad simply served as a vehicle for the very public, opinionated and divisive — yet undeniably insightful — Barkley to offer an indictment of the NBA and the culture it creates around its athletes. This ad allowed a future Hall of Famer the airtime to tell the truth as he saw it, the truth that the heroic mythology created about him was entirely misinformation dreamed up, in part, by the league he played for.
This ad was incredibly telling. The legend it attacked had given rise to a dangerous sense of complacency in the very institutions designed to hold athletes to higher standards. Beyond tricking their fans, leagues blinded themselves to the conduct of their employees. In spinning elaborate tales of morality about their employees all those years ago, leagues paved the way for the morally reprehensible behavior we have spent so much time in the past couple of weeks trying to dissect and understand. The road to hell, it seems, really is paved with good intentions.
And if the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, then the NFL, NBA and MLB absolutely need help. Because before Ray Rice, Alex Rodriguez and Chris Anderson, there were Donte Stallworth and Aaron Hernandez, Mark McGwire and Pete Rose, Kobe Bryant and Javaris Crittenton. Because recent events are just the latest in a seemingly unending cycle of transgressions — criminal and otherwise — committed by people who just happen to be professional athletes. Because this isn’t the first time that any of these leagues have offered meaningless platitudes to their fans and then turned around and acted as if everything were merely business as usual.
So instead of nitpicking about player attire or excessive celebrations, leagues should spend a little more time considering and addressing the character of the people they employ. Because these institutions, like it or not, play an integral part in the creation of the American conscience, from inception to fruition. And all the good work the leagues do melts away in the face of their sheer unwillingness even to begin to re-evaluate themselves.
But it is not unreasonable to hope for attitude changes from the NFL and others. There are too many smart people in high places for such organizations to ignore so blatantly the writing on the wall. If for no reason other than quelling the PR maelstrom, they should make changes to better address player conduct and downplay the moral rhetoric that encompasses the game.
And we too should hold ourselves responsible. We need to remember that possessing God-given athletic talents — or any sort of talent, for that matter — does not indicate virtue or inherently make someone a role model. At the end of the day, Charles Barkley said it best: “Just because I dunk a basketball doesn’t mean I should raise your kids.” It’s about time the NBA, NFL and MLB registered and then acted upon this reality.
Sean Blake ’17 can’t dunk a basketball and probably shouldn’t be raising your kids either. He can be reached at sean_blake@brown.edu.
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