Does the NFL think other domestic assault is not as bad?

The sports and news universe exploded again today on the subject of Ray Rice’s domestic assault case and the NFL’s response to it which, it seems increasingly clear, was a cover up. The source of the explosion was an Associated Press report from Rob Maadi that relayed the story of a “law enforcement official” who “says he sent a video of Ray Rice punching his then-fiancee to an NFL executive five months ago, while league executives have insisted they didn’t see the violent images until this week. The person played The Associated Press a 12-second voicemail from an NFL office number on April 9 confirming the video arrived. A female voice expresses thanks and says: ‘You’re right. It’s terrible.'” This confirmed my suspicion that the NFL had seen the video. Following this story, the trickle of voices calling for commissioner Roger Goodell to resign became a burbling brook. As I sat and witnessed all of this through my telephone, I had a thought about the NFL’s conduct during the last couple of months and what they have inadvertently said about domestic assault. What they’ve said, through their actions, is this: “We think other domestic violence is not as bad as what Ray Rice did on that video.”

Follow along with me here. First, they suspended Rice for two games. Then, they altered the policy on domestic violence (as well as other forms of violence) because they “got it wrong” as Commissioner Goodell said in his statement on the change of policy. The new policy called for a suspension of six games for a first offense and a lifetime ban for a second. A few days ago, after this policy was released, the video of Rice assaulting his then fiancee, Janay Palmer, became public. Within hours, the NFL had suspended Rice indefinitely for an assault which not only happened before the new policy was released but was also his first offense.

What the NFL must be saying by breaking the spirit if not quite the letter of its new policy is either:

As the Onion brilliantly suggested, that the NFL only intended to toughen its policy against videotaped domestic violence
That its new policy is also too weak,
That they think Rice’s assault was more violent than other assaults.

We all know the first option is true, but it’s indefensible as policy. The second option is probably also true, although an organization is in rough shape if they start arguing against a policy they put in place less than two weeks ago. No, I think it’s the last option that’s most likely to get at what the NFL is actually thinking right now. It’s also completely idiotic. What does the NFL think is going to happen when freakishly strong people used to physical violence decide to assault their partners? Do they think Greg Hardy’s (6’4″, 278lbs) or Ray McDonald’s (6’3″, 290) gentleness was what caused their partners to call the police? It’s not just that this idea is idiotic, it’s also damaging because it suggests that some domestic assault is just not so bad.

It’s all so bad and the NFL needs to do everything in its power to internalize that and then become a leader on the topic. They would be well served by reading Jodi Jacobson, editor-in-chief of RH Reality Check, a reproductive & sexual health and justice publication, who wrote on the topic yesterday. The depth of her knowledge on the topic is wonderful, which only serves to make her criticism more scathing. In response to the Ravens coach who said what the NFL clearly also though, that “seeing the video” changed their views on the assault, Jacobson writes:

Really? How? Seeing a woman lying unconscious on a hotel lobby floor after being dragged like a rag doll from an elevator and then kicked as though she was an inanimate object (as depicted in video release in February) wasn’t enough to convince him that Ray Rice had committed a serious offense?

At the end of her post, Jacobson calls on the NFL to establish a very large fund to support the prevention and the victims of domestic abuse. That sounds like a pretty good idea to me too. Your move, NFL.

Read This: On Roger Goodell & Ray Rice

What Does it Take to Get Roger Goodell Fired?

By Andrew Sharp for Grantland.com

The problems in the real world are bad enough, but if we can’t even get things right in this alternate universe full of fake laws and uniform policies and codes of conduct, that just makes everything seem twice as hopeless. Sports are supposed to be an escape, not a reminder of everything that’s unfair and hypocritical everywhere else.

What did Roger Goodell know about Ray Rice and when did he know it?

Warning — the subject of this post is domestic violence and many of the links in the post contain videos of domestic violence.

A short recap of the Ray Rice story

This past February, National Football League running back Ray Rice assaulted his then fiancée, now wife, Janay Rice in an elevator. Soon after, video acquired by tmz.com showed Rice dragging Janay’s limp, unconscious body out of the elevator following the assault. In May, according to Justin Fenton of the Baltimore Sun, New Jersey (where the assault happened) courts assigned Rice to a “Pretrial intervention” program that “comes with between six months and three years of probation in addition to enrolling in rehabilitation programs that New Jersey courts say focus on personal, cultural, economic and social issues that contributed to the criminal act.” Two months later, in July, the NFL suspended Rice for two games. Following a generally furious response to this punishment, the league’s commissioner, Roger Gooddell, admitted that he “didn’t get it right” and announced a new, stronger set of punishments for domestic assault. Today tmz.com once again drove this story forward by releasing new video from the inside of the elevator which shows Ray Rice knocking Janay Rice unconscious with a single punch. Showing the power of video, within a few hours of its release, Rice’s team, the Baltimore Ravens fired him and the league has announced that he is suspended indefinitely.

There already has been and will be an enormous amount of traditional coverage about this topic. I’m going to leave most of that to the New York Times, the Washington Post, tmz.com, and Sports Illustrated. People should be discussing why there was no stronger response from the legal system. By all means, we should be talking about how unfortunately and infuriatingly common domestic assault is and what we can do to address it. J. A. Adande made a great point on twitter today when he asked how women with no video evidence are supposed to expect justice when Rice, with video evidence was punished so little. We should be critical of the coverage as well. What’s real indignation and what is face-saving indignation? Is it just an artifact of sports media covering an assault that we keep seeing the punch described in technical boxing terms as a “left hook” or is there some hidden agenda? What language should we use to describe it? All of that is important but today, I want to share a single thought process that went through my head when I saw the video and heard the news.

What I thought of when I saw the Ray Rice video

The single question that I asked myself when I saw the video of Ray Rice assaulting his wife Janay Rice was “What did he know and when did he know it?” What did Roger Goodell know about Ray Rice and when did he know it? What evidence of the assault did the Commissioner of the NFL have, specifically the video that tmz.com released today, when he made his disciplinary decision about the situation?

For those of you who lived through the sixties or the eighties, this is a familiar question. It first entered the culture during the Watergate hearings when Senator Howard Baker repeatedly asked it of Richard Nixon. What did he know and when did he know it? During the Iran-Contra scandal in the eighties, President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H. W. Bush felt its sting. What did they know and when did they know it? It’s the key question when evaluating a leader or an organization suspected of covering something up. Already it’s being asked of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell about the video released today. Had he seen the video when he chose to suspend Ray Rice for only two games?

The absolute authority on the subject of knowing is Ben Cramer who wrote the amazing history of the 1988 Presidential race, What It Takes: The Way to the White House. In it, he follows six of the presidential hopefuls from childhood through the campaign, including George H. W. Bush and Joe Biden. Let’s listen to him on the subject of knowing:

Then there is another shade of the verb, To Know, in the sense of awareness. It is about what’s going on right now, and as such it is Washington’s highest branch of knowledge… But as the highest form of capital-knowing, this quest for awareness is also the most dangerous. Clearly, the lack of this knowing can undermine reputation or power, especially if one’s position, or one’s connaissance, indicates that one ought to know. To be unaware, to be Out of the Loop, is allied in the tribal consciousness with impotence, inability, imbecility… and ultimately with the fatal affliction of ridiculousness. But there is also, in success, in wide awareness, a danger just as mortal. For this is the brand of knowing that is closest to Eating from the Tree of Knowledge, and can result in expulsion from Eden. When things foul up in a massive way… then this is the knowing implied in the most portentous of capital questions:

What did he know and when did he know it?

And so, there has developed… a kind of knowing without being known to know, for which there is no word at all. It is a nonoperational, untraceable knowing, which can seldom be proven or disproven… It is knowing all about the thing without being culpable of knowing the thing itself.

The parallel between politics and sports sports may seem over-the-top to some and I will admit the scale is slightly different but the principles remain the same. The individuals who perpetrate a crime should be punished and rehabilitated but it’s addressing the institutions that permit the behavior and the people in charge of them that is of greater social importance. What did he know and when did he know it? I think Roger Goddell had access to that video when he decided to suspend Ray Rice for two games. I think he was trying to practice the art of knowing without being known to know, like Ben Cramer described above, and I think he’s going to be caught red-handed. When we find out that Roger Goodell saw the video, he should resign or be fired, and I believe he will be sooner or later.

Week One NFL One Liners

On Mondays during in the fall, the conversation is so dominated by NFL football that the expression “Monday morning quarterback” has entered the vernacular. The phrase is defined by Google as “a person who passes judgment on and criticizes something after the event.” With the popularity of fantasy football, we now have Monday morning quarterbacks talking about football from two different perspectives. We want you to be able to participate in this great tradition, so all fall we’ll be running NFL One Liners on Monday. Use these tiny synopses throughout the day:

Week 1

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, AT 1:00 P.M. ET

Buffalo Bills 23, at Chicago Bears 20

Overtime games are relatively rare in the NFL but this was one of two in the first week of the season. The Bears don’t often get the benefit of the doubt from the sports media and they certainly won’t after a first game like this one.

Line: Let’s not overreact to the first week. I still think the Bears are good and the Bills are not.

Cincinnati Bengals 23, at Baltimore Ravens 16

The ugliest win of the day, the Bengals didn’t impress anyone and the Ravens impressed even less. Bengals scored five field goals before winning the game on a long pass to their best player, A. J. Green.

Line: If there was such a thing as an immoral victory in football, this would be it.

Cleveland Browns 27, at Pittsburgh Steelers 30

Half way through this game, when the Steelers were up 27 to 3, you thought the story for the next week was going to be when Browns’ backup rookie quarterback, Johhny Manziel was going to take over for the starter Brian Hoyer. Even after the frantic comeback attempt came up short, you feel as though the Browns and the rest of us will be saved from that nuisance for another week or two at least.

Line: Cleveland is cursed.

Washington Redskins 6, at Houston Texans 17

Last year was the season from hell for the Houston Texans and the Washington Redskins. Today made it seem like Houston is on its way up while Washington is still descending. Dante would be pleased.

Line: Washington quarterback RGIII may never again be as good as he was his rookie year.

Jacksonville Jaguars 17, at Philadelphia Eagles 34

The heavily favored Eagles didn’t start scoring until the second half. Luckily once they started, they didn’t stop until they had 34 points.

Line: Shaky start for the Eagles, let’s watch them next week to see if this was an anomaly or a warning sign.

Tennessee Titans 26, at Kansas City Chiefs 10

There’s a math thing called regression which is all the rage in football. It just means that things that have been improbably good or bad are likely to return to being average. The Chiefs were improbably good last year so everyone expected them to be predictably average this year. They were.

Line: The Chiefs season is all about regression to the mean, baby.

New England Patriots 20, at Miami Dolphins 33

Huh? What? The Patriots have won their first game every season since 2003 and dominated their division during that same period. When they were up 20-10, everything made sense. Losing 33 to 20? It’s like the earth tilting in a different direction.

Line: If the Dolphins can stay healthy, they might be able to challenge the Patriots for the division title this year.

Minnesota Vikings 34, at St. Louis Rams 6

Coming into the game, both starting quarterbacks felt equally shaky. After a bad first half from Rams starter, Shaun Hill, he was either injured badly enough or benched in lieu of the unknown Austin Davis. The Vikings and quarterback Matt Cassel looked great but against the shaky Rams, who knows how good they really are.

Line: The Rams might not win a game this year.

New Orleans Saints 34, at Atlanta Falcons 37

The second overtime game of the day, this was a back-and-forth, all offense, all excitement all the time, nail-biter of a game. The Falcons offense looked unstoppable and the Saints offense looked, well, unstoppable. Honestly, neither team really stopped the other. That’s why the score was so high!

Line: Oh shucks, you know me, some people like all that scoring but I prefer a lower-scoring, old-school football game.

Oakland Raiders 14, at New York Jets 19

The Jets won this matchup between two teams not expected to win many games this year. Then again, the Jets are designed to win low-scoring, ugly games like this one, so maybe they’re better than we think.

Line: The decisive story of this game was the teams’ abilities to rush the football. The Jets rushed for 212 yards. The Raiders, only 13.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, AT 4:25 P.M. ET

Carolina Panthers 20, at Tampa Bay Buccaneers 14

Even with star quarterback Cam Newton sitting on the sidelines because of a rib injury, the Carolina Panthers had enough to beat the Buccaneers behind veteran backup Derek Anderson.

Line: Derek Anderson! That guy is terrible!

San Francisco 49ers 28, at Dallas Cowboys 17

The Forty Niners went up 28 to 3 in the first half and never looked back. Actually, they did look back and laughed sardonically at the Cowboys’ frantic attempt to catch up.

Line: Tony Romo [the Cowboys quarterback] was terrible!

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, AT 8:30 P.M. ET

Indianapolis Colts 24, at Denver Broncos 31

It’s probably no coincidence that, in a game whose plot was defined as being “Peyton Manning’s old team against Peyton Manning’s new team,” the team with Peyton Manning actually playing for them, won. He is still one of the best quarterbacks in the world although his opponent and successor in Indianapolis, Andrew Luck is not so shabby himself. Luck led his team on a second half comeback that just fell short of success.

Line: Peyton Manning is so good, it’s almost not fun to watch. He makes football seem like a surgical procedure.

NFL Week 1 Good Cop, Bad Cop Precap

NFL Patriots Bills — Football is back! Football is back.

The NFL season has started but how do you know which games to watch and which to skip? Ask our favorite police duo with their good cop, bad cop precaps of all the Week 1 matchups in the National Football League this weekend. To see which games will be televised in your area, check out 506sports.com’s essential NFL maps. For snack ideas, check out Mashable’s 32 hot dog recipes that correspond to the 32 NFL teams.

Week 1

Sunday, September 7, at 1:00 p.m. ET

Buffalo Bills at Chicago Bears

Good cop: Two classic teams with blue-collar fan bases that deserve to see their teams thrive!

Bad cop: Uh, the Bills quarterback is on such thin ice that the team just signed journeyman backup Kyle Orton and there’s already talk he might take over.

Cincinnati Bengals at Baltimore Ravens

Good cop: Division rivals!

Bad cop: A matchup between the two most overrated and overpaid quarterbacks in the league, Andy Dalton and Joe Flacco.

Cleveland Browns at Pittsburgh Steelers

Good cop: Division rivals!

Bad cop: The Browns’ best wide receiver, Josh Gordon, is suspended for the year because he smoked some weed and their most exciting quarterback, rookie Johnny Manziel isn’t going to play.

Washington Redskins at Houston Texans

Good cop: One of the most athletic quarterbacks in the league, Robert Griffin III, goes up against the dominating defensive line of the Houston Texans!

Bad cop: Yeah, great. That’ll be fun to watch for the first five minutes until J.J. Watt and Jadeveon Clowney stomp so thoroughly on RGIII that there’s nothing left to see.

Jacksonville Jaguars at Philadelphia Eagles

Good cop: The Eagles are the fastest playing team in the league and the Jaguars are going to emulate them! We could see 100 points in this game!

Bad cop: They would still all be scored by the Eagles.

Tennessee Titans at Kansas City Chiefs

Good cop: The Titans have a young promising quarterback and very underrated wide receivers while the Chiefs have the best running back in the league!

Bad cop: I know but doesn’t this game just make you want to say, “meh”?

New England Patriots at Miami Dolphins

Good cop: The Patriots travel down to steamy Miami where they will struggle with the young Miami defense!

Bad cop: Tom Brady struggle? Not likely.

Minnesota Vikings at St. Louis Rams

Good cop: Viking Cordarrelle Patterson and Ram Tavon Austin both make real life football look like a video game because they’re such dynamic athletes!

Bad cop: Unfortunately they’ve got terrible quarterbacks throwing them the ball.

New Orleans Saints at Atlanta Falcons

Good cop: Games between these teams are ALWAYS exciting! Dynamic offenses, great players, what more could you want?!

Bad cop: This game may not be totally uninteresting and horrible.

Oakland Raiders at New York Jets

Good cop: So kind of you to say that about the Saints vs. Falcons game! Just for that, I’ll admit, this game is totally uninteresting and horrible!

Bad cop: It is.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, AT 4:25 P.M. ET

Carolina Panthers at Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Good cop: Two of the more mysterious teams in the league this year! The Panthers were good last year and the Buccaneers were horrible but it seems like things might flip this year for both of them!

Bad cop: The Panthers have an excellent quarterback but figuratively no one to catch the ball. The Buccaneers signed Josh McCown on the basis of one good year. If he were actually good enough to start, wouldn’t that have shown before he turned 35?

San Francisco 49ers at Dallas Cowboys

Good cop: Classic franchises, exciting players like Colin Kaepernick, Michael Crabtree, Dez Bryant, and Tony Romo!

Bad cop: Simple outcome. The Cowboys have the worst defense in the league. They’re going to lose.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, AT 8:30 P.M. ET

Indianapolis Colts at Denver Broncos

Good cop: Peyton Manning against his old team! Andrew Luck is awesome!

Bad cop: A fun plot-line, but I bet the game feels antiseptic.

Monday, SEPTEMBER 8, AT 7:10 and 10:20 P.M. ET

New York Giants at Detroit Lions

Good cop: Eli Manning is Peyton’s brother! He’s also really good at football!

Bad cop: Now you just sound like me. This game is already the Dear Sports Fan “Do not watch this game” game. ’nuff said.

San Diego Chargers at Arizona Cardinals

Good cop: The last game of the weekend could be the best one! The Chargers had a great run into the playoffs at the end of last year and the Cardinals were the best team in the league to miss the playoffs!

Bad cop: Cardinals Quarterback, Carson Palmer, hasn’t won an opening game since 2007! The Cardinals have no chance! Also no functioning offensive linemen!

Do Not Watch This Game: 9.6.14 Weekend Edition

Do not watch this game 1 — Sad fan says, “Do not watch this game!”

For sports fans, the weekend is a cornucopia of wonderful games to watch. This is particularly true in the fall with its traditional pattern of College Football on Saturday and NFL Football on Sunday and Monday. As the parent, child, girlfriend, boyfriend, partner, husband, wife, roommate, or best friend of a sports fan, this can be a challenge. It must be true that some games are more important to watch than others but it’s hard to know which is which. As a sports fan, the power of habit and hundreds of thousands of marketing dollars get in the way of remembering to take a break from sports and do something with your parent, child, girlfriend, boyfriend, partner, husband, wife, roommate, or best friend. To aid all of us in this, and just because it’s fun, I’m going to write a weekly post on Friday highlighting a single game that is ideal for skipping. Use this to help tell yourself or someone else: “Do not watch this game!”

Monday, 7:10 p.m. ET, NFL Football, Detroit Lions vs. New York Giants. It’s on ESPN but do not watch this game!

Monday night is traditionally one of the biggest, most important, most exciting football games of the week. Alone, on prime time, the Monday night game has a cache all to itself. Except, on the first weekend of the NFL season, there are two Monday night games. There is a game that starts earlier than normal, at 7:10 p.m. ET and another that starts at 10:20 p.m. ET. This makes them both feel a little less important. Not only is the game between the Giants and the Lions not alone on Monday, it’s not even the last game of the week. This means that it’s less likely than any other Monday night game to be a final, deciding factor in a fantasy football matchup.

Nor is this a premium matchup. The two teams playing are resolutely mediocre. Both teams won seven games and lost nine last year. Vegas Super Bowl odds, as of today, suggest that the Lions would win the championship only once if the season were played 42 times. The Giants are said to be even less likely, at 65 to 1. Sports books also set an over/under for the number of wins during the regular season a team will win. Before the season you can bet on whether a team will over or underperform what Vegas thinks it’s going to do. The Lions’ number is 8.5 wins, the Giants’ is 8. The quarterbacks last year threw the most (Giant Eli Manning with 27) and sixth most (Lion Matt Stafford with 19) interceptions in the league.

From a social or relationship standpoint, the Monday game this weekend is the perfect time to skip a game. Even the most easygoing, agreeable, casual sports fan partner or parent or whatever is likely to be a little fatigued from the first full weekend of football. Take early Monday night and have a nice dinner and relax and do not watch the game between the Giants and the Lions. It’ll be okay.

Of course, if you or the fan in your life is a New York Giants or Detroit Lions fan, this isn’t a good game to skip. As an alternate, skip the Sunday, late afternoon game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Dallas Cowboys. Why? Because the Cowboys have the worst defense in the league and the 49ers are still good enough to beat them but not good enough to be must-watch TV.

I don't always watch sports, but when I do, I prefer contrasts

Vamping on the great Dos Equis commercials that feature the “Most Interesting Man in the World” claiming, “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis,” I don’t always watch sports, but when I do, I prefer contrasts. I think many sports fans are like this. I’d rather watch a great defense play against a great offense than watch two great offenses score mounds of points on each other or two great defenses circle each other cautiously. In boxing, I’d rather watch a hot-headed slugger face off against a tactically sound boxer. In baseball, I want to see if a great pitcher can throw his way through a murderer’s row of hitters or whether they tire him down. Even in individual sports like downhill skiing or golf, it’s more compelling if you can watch people approach the puzzle of winning in different ways. There are two sporting events tonight that promise big contrasts in style and I am looking forward to catching at least part of both of them. I’ll lay out the contrasts in this post, tell me if you watch and if so, whether you see and enjoy the contrasts I describe.

Cool vs. Hot at the U.S. Open

Tennis is perhaps the most psychologically difficult sport because its players are alone on the court for up to five hours. In major tournaments like the U.S. Open, they aren’t even allowed to speak to their coaches. To win a tennis match, men (women play only three sets) need to win three sets out of five. To win a set, they need to be the first to win six by two games or win in a tie-break. Games require them to get to four points but they have to win by two. In matches between players of relatively equal skill, temperament or injury almost always mean the difference between winning and losing.

Roger Federer’s name is all over the record books but perhaps his most impressive record is that he was ranked number one in the world for 237 weeks in a row. This record expresses his nature. He is cool. He doesn’t get ruffled. His movements are smooth, graceful, and efficient. He never looks like he’s trying that hard or, frankly, that he’s physically strong enough to keep up with his opponent. All of this explains, in part, how Federer can still be playing at such a high level at 33, an age at which most tennis players’ physical skills have degraded to the point that they cannot keep up anymore.

Gael Monfils looks like the member of a tennis playing species

Federer’s opponent is the exact opposite. Gael Monfils is a physical freak. Federer looks like a robot programmed to play tennis. Monfils looks like a species genetically designed to play tennis. He’s tall, incredibly muscular, and flexible. His springs around the court like a modern dancer — never quite centered but never out of balance either. If it weren’t for his temperament, he’d probably be completely unbeatable. As it is, he spends a lot of time self-destructing on tennis courts. He screams at himself, gives up, tries again, gives up again. He can’t seem to help being a showman. The more important the moment is, the less he seems to be able to help leaping into shots or trying to hit the ball between his legs. The most dominant he’s ever looked on a tennis court was a rain delay dance competition at the French Open:

At least until this U.S. Open, in which Monfils, playing without a coach, hasn’t lost a single set. Monfils remains as compelling as he is confusing.

I have to admit, I kind of love both these players. I can’t help but root for old-age and treachery to win out over youth and vigor, so I want Federer to win. Meanwhile, Monfils’ unpredictability and pathos make me love him, and he just looks like he’s having more fun when he’s having fun out there than anyone else. We’ll see what happens tonight around 8 p.m. on ESPN.

Defense vs. Offense to Start the NFL Season

The first NFL game is a celebration and would be must watch TV for sports fans no matter who was playing. That said, tonight’s game between the Seattle Seahawks and the Green Bay Packers provides a great contrast in everything but color. The Seahawks have the best defense in the league, with big, fast, and brash defenders flying all over the place, hitting anything that moves. The Packers offense has been in the top third of the league in scoring for the last five years. The Packers have a well established star at quarterback who leads an offense based on quick throws and immaculate timing. The Seahawks specialize in messing up offensive timing by hitting receivers (legally or illegally) at the line of scrimmage. The Seahawks offense tries to pound their opponents into the ground with powerful running attacks. The Packers defense was, well, frankly bad last year.

The only similarities between these teams is that they are both good, they both think they have a chance to win the Super Bowl this year, and they both wear green. See what happens at 8:30 p.m. ET on NBC.

Understanding Michael Sam's NFL experience

One of the biggest National Football Leagues (NFL) stories in the weeks leading up to the start of the season has been Michael Sam, the first openly gay man to be drafted by a professional team. As interesting as this story has the potential to be, most of the coverage just misses the mark because it fails to establish enough context. Almost all of the stories that I’ve read have assumed a base of knowledge about the offseason process in the NFL that only hardcore NFL fans have. Furthermore, even most attentive sports fans don’t have a real understanding of what the experience and expectations are for a marginal NFL prospect. Without this context, it’s very difficult to tell how much of what Michael Sam is going through is unique because of his historic status and how much of it is completely normal. We simply don’t often pay this much attention to low draft picks or undrafted players in the NFL. In this post, I’ll do my best to explain the context so that we all have a chance of better understanding Michael Sam’s NFL experience. In this effort, I’m aided enormously by Charles Siebert‘s amazing New York Times Magazine profile called The Hard Life of an NFL Long Shot about his nephew, Pat Schiller, who was, in 2012, in a similar situation to Sam’s.

How does the NFL offseason work?

The NFL offseason begins the day after the Super Bowl and ends when the first game of the season is played. It’s a seven month affair. To understand Sam’s experience, we should start at the NFL draft in mid-May. Over the course of a few days, the thirty-two NFL teams select 256 college players, an average of eight players per team although some teams may have more picks, some fewer. The Rams this year had eleven picks. After the draft, the draft picks agents negotiate with the team and most eventually settle on terms and sign a contract. Next up are OTAs or “organized team activities” which are basically glorified practice sessions in June or July that serve as the players first introduction to their teammates and coaches.

The official pre-season consists of four games exhibition games in consecutive weekends starting on August 7th this year. These four weeks of pre-season football work like a giant audition that teams hold for players. Strict rules and dates apply to this process. For the first three games, teams are allowed to have 90 people on their rosters. After the third game, teams have to cut their players/applicants down from 90 to 75. After the fourth game, that number drops to the regular season norm, 53 players per team. In the course of a month, the number of players on NFL teams goes from 2,880 to 1,696 for a reduction of 41%. In a lot of ways, this whole process reminds me of the job market for professors. Each year hundreds of new PhDs come out of graduate school but the number of professor jobs remains relatively static. So it is with football players. Each year, around 300 college players try to get jobs in the NFL but the number of available jobs remain the same. There’s simply not enough room for everyone.

Football is a brutal game on the field and a brutal business off it. Players who get cut get nothing — contracts at this level have no guaranteed money. Their options are bleak because there aren’t many other football leagues where you can make a good living. What they can do and do do is go home, keep training, and wait for a phone call from an NFL team that may never come. When that call comes, more often than not, it’s for a place on a team’s practice squad. The practice squad or scout team is a group of up to ten players that a team can employ in addition to their 53-man roster. These players are usually used to imitate the tendencies and peculiarities of an opponent in practices for the week leading up to a game. Practice squad players are officially free-agents so they can be signed to the full-time roster by any team who likes them whether that’s the team whose practice squad they are on or not.

This whole process is physically and psychologically incredibly challenging for the players who go through it. Let’s lean on Siebert here for a feel of what it’s like to go through it.

First, players who have been the best of the best for their whole lives have to come to terms with their new status and struggle. As Schiller said to Siebert:

And then you come to the N.F.L. and, well, I’ve never felt so bad at a sport I know I’m good at.

Injuries are suffered in silence for fear of being tagged as injury prone or simply replaced with a healthier aspiring player:

There was no thought, he said, of seeking out a trainer. Everything a rookie does in camp is documented, and visits to the training room leave the wrong impression.“We have an expression here,” he told me. “ ‘You don’t make the club in the tub.”’

Injuries to great to hide are a marginal player’s biggest fear:

He picked up an empty bottle of anti-inflammatory pills and tossed it in the trash.“Even if I make it,” he said, “the average career is what, three or four years tops. But if I get hurt now, I’m gone. It’s nothing personal. If I’m injured, I’m dead weight. I’m stealing their money. Do you know how many linebackers there are sitting home right now that want my job? Hundreds. I mean, let’s get real. As much as Coach Smith or Coach Pires might like me, it would be: ‘Hey, it’s been a fun ride. You’re a good kid. But see ya, Schiller!’ ”

But they are also a source of great hope because an injury to an established player could make room for them on the team’s roster:

Pat sat bolt upright, grabbed the remote and scrolled back through the game to determine the precise moment James entered. He then went to the Falcons’ game thread on his computer, eyes narrowing, lips slightly parted in anticipation.“Stephen Nicholas,” he muttered. “Ankle.”For the next two days of my visit, we were on the Stephen Nicholas ankle watch.

What happened to Michael Sam?

Michael Sam was drafted in the seventh round by the St. Louis Rams. In some ways this was an ideal result for him. Coach Jeff Fisher is well-known as one of the more progressive coaches in the league. He was firm in stating that Sam’s sexual preference was not going to be an issue or a factor within the team and he has the standing to make most observers believe him. The Rams also have one of the best defensive lines in the league. Their two starters at defensive end, the position Sam plays, Chris Long and Robert Quinn, are as close to being household names as you can get playing that position. Sam was in a position to learn from the best but he also had a tough fight ahead of him to make the team. As Siebert writes in his article, “The math of making an N.F.L. roster seems straight forward. There are 40 or so players who are Ones and Twos on offense and defense. Then there is a punter, at least one kicker, a long snapper and often a third-string quarterback. This leaves just a handful of positions available.” Those positions often go, not to the next best player at a position, but to the player who can be most valuable to a team on their Special Teams’ units that return or cover kickoffs and punts. As a former star in college and a big dude at 261 lbs, Sam is at a disadvantage in this arena. He’s probably never played on a special teams unit before and players his size at his position usually do not.

Sam made it through the cut from 90 players to 75 but not the last one to 53 players. The St. Louis Rams cut Sam on August 30. He wouldn’t have long to wait before his next opportunity though. On September 3, the Dallas Cowboys signed Sam to their practice squad. The Cowboys have a less heralded defensive line but even so, Sam will be working hard on the practice squad, trying to impress without getting injured, probably needing an injury on the Cowboys or on another team in order to get signed. This is more likely than it seems. There have already been 113 players put on Injured Reserve or the Physically Unable to Perform list since the start of August. My guess is that Sam will play in an NFL game this year.

How typical was Sam’s experience? Did his sexual identity matter?

This is the hardest question to answer. From what I know, it seems like Sam’s experience was fairly normal for a player drafted in the seventh round. I did a little research on the 41 players drafted with Sam in the seventh round this year and of them 19 or just under half have already been injured or cut. Of the Rams’ four seventh round draft picks, none made the team.

The two questions that loom largest in my mind about Sam’s experience, both of which I cannot answer, are whether his sexual identity could have made him get drafted later than he would have otherwise (which would make it harder for him to make the team because the team perceives themselves as having committed less and sunk less cost into him) and how much the pressure of being a trailblazer may have affected his play in the pre-season.

Of course Sam’s sexual identity or more accurately, other’s perception of his sexual identity and the focus it created on him, affected his experience in innumerable ways. That said, I’m not sure we’ll ever know whether it may have changed Sam’s NFL outcome in the ways I suggested above. I hope, for Sam’s sake and for our sake as a culture, that Sam makes them a non-issue by playing well in the NFL later this season. If it’s not in the cards for him, I don’t think we’ll have long to wait for another brave, gay football player to come along.

Oh, and in case you were wondering what happened to Pat Schiller, the aspiring football player from the great New York Times magazine article? He’s still pursuing his dream. He was one of the players competing with Sam for a spot on the Rams this summer. He made the team as a fourth-string linebacker and special teams player.

Clearing a reporter's name after his death

In today’s soundbite and meme-laced world, it’s easy to empathize with someone whose ten seconds of fame came because of a misunderstanding. It’s easy to feel bad for a reporter whose name, when it was brought up, was invariably used as an example of asking a stupid question. Inspired by his death a few days ago, the true story of sports reporter Butch John is starting to come out. I saw this story reblogged by Barry Petchesky on Deadspin.com but its source is reporter Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinal.

The myth of Butch John is so unbelievable that it’s hard to comprehend it having lasted as gospel truth since 1988. In that year, the Washington Redskins faced the Denver Broncos in the Super Bowl. Washington’s quarterback was a man named Doug Williams. Williams was the first black man to quarterback his team to the Super Bowl and in the weeks leading up to the big game, that fact became the subject of many stories, television segments, and interviews. During the fateful press conference, Williams was getting a lot of questions about the topic, and he answered them dutifully until Butch John supposedly asked this hum-dinger, “How long have you been a black quarterback?” Now, this is a silly question. As we all learned from Mean Girls, you can’t ask someone why they are (or how long they’ve been) their race.

Of course, this isn’t what John asked. What he actually asked, according to Mike Bianchi, was this, “Doug, it’s obvious you’ve been a black quarterback all your life. When did it start to matter?”

I’m sure that if Williams had heard the question correctly and responded truthfully, he would have said, “it has always mattered and it always will.” I’m sure if we could ask him, Butch John would deny it mattering whether people think he asked a dumb question once upon a time. But I think it matters and so do his former colleagues like Rick Cleveland who writes in an obituary for John:

He wrote well and he wrote often. He was a fine writer and he worked hard. He was versatile in that he handled news, features and columns with equal proficiency.

Better late than never, I suppose, but it’s another lesson to think twice about the stories we read and hear. Things are not always what they seem.

Why are fantasy football drafts so exciting?

I’m hours away from my most important fantasy football draft of the year. I’m full of anticipatory energy. I’m not alone in this feeling this way about fantasy football drafts. The other day I talked to a self-professed fantasy sports obsessive and he described his experience of draft night as “shaky – nervous and excited.” For people who don’t play fantasy sports, and here’s some common ground that many sports fans and non-sports fans can find with each other, the experience of draft night is a strange one. Let’s see if I can explain it.

For a very, very quick reminder, here’s how fantasy football works and what a draft is. Fantasy football is a game that people play with a small group of people, usually friends or colleagues. Just like most other games, the outcome of fantasy football is based partially on choices made by its players and partially on semi-random events that occur in the game’s universe. In a role-playing game like Dungeons & Dragons, these random events may be generated by rolling dice. In video and computer games, there are semi-random events programmed into the game itself – Sim City might generate a challenging natural disaster, a shooting game may present its player with more or fewer enemies to defeat. In fantasy football, the outside force that modifies how the game goes is the real performance of players within the National Football League (NFL). In fantasy football, each player or owner of a fantasy football team has a selection of real NFL players on their team and depending on how the real players perform in real games, their imaginary team will win or lose.

Draft night is the primary time when fantasy football owners construct their teams. There are two ways that this happens. The most common is a “snake draft” where teams take turns choosing players. Not unlike a playground game, when all the teams have chosen a player, the order is reversed for choosing the second player, and so the draft goes, snaking back and forth. The other model is an auction where players go up for auction and every team has a chance to bid on them with a (fake) budget. While there is some wiggle room during the fantasy football season to trade players with other teams or to drop players from your team and pick up players who are not on any team, the draft is the most meaningful tactical moment of the whole game.

Beyond simply winning or losing in the imaginary world of fantasy football, draft night is exciting because it establishes which real players you’re going to root for in real football (albeit for your own imaginary team’s purposes) for the next sixteen weeks. Especially for people like me who don’t have a favorite NFL team, my fantasy team’s real players are the ones I end up following and rooting for. This is so widely true that choosing “boring” players has become a good strategy for winning in fantasy football. Because fantasy owners enjoy rooting for the players on their team and they enjoy rooting for volatile, explosive playmakers, there’s a market inefficiency that rewards going against the grain and selecting consistent, not flashy, boring performers.

Players I’ve had on my team for several years are sentimental favorites of mine. In the league I run, we are allowed to keep three players from year to year. I find myself rooting for the players I keep and keeping the players I root for. The best example of this is Brandon Marshall, a wide receiver on the Chicago Bears. Marshall is an outspoken advocate for the normalization of mental disorders, one of which he suffers with himself. Every time he does something for his cause, like wearing lime green cleats (which represent mental illness like pink represents breast cancer,) in a game, I feel proud because he’s on my team. If he weren’t a good player, I wouldn’t keep him on my team, but if he weren’t a good person, I might choose to keep another good player instead. This allegiance can cause problems too, because the truth is that you can’t ever really know someone you don’t know. Take Ray Rice, for example, the star running back suspended for domestic abuse. I can’t remember if I’ve ever had him on my fantasy team but he did play for my alma mater, Rutgers, so I’ve rooted for him for at least a decade in a similar (but probably less intense) way to if he had been on my fantasy team. When your success is tied to a player’s success, the tie you create in your mind with that person is strong. It makes a moral or legal transgression by that player feel more like a betrayal.^[1]

One of the good things about fantasy football is that it’s a long period of enjoyment for (usually) not that much or no money. The draft is a big piece of how much I am going to enjoy or be tormented by the it over the next four months.

Fantasy football may be a simulated experience but the excitement is real.

Footnotes (↵ returns to text)

Did we collectively react to Tiger Woods’ moral transgressions more strongly because of the best selling video game, Tiger Woods’ golf that gave the player the chance to play as Tiger Woods? I bet we did.↵