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Last week two NFL players, Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez and Browns rookie Ausar Walcott, made the national news when they were arrested within twenty four hours of each other for serious felonies. Hernandez was charged with first degree murder for a gang-related execution style shooting, while Walcott ended up in handcuffs on an attempted murder charge after punching a man in the head so hard that he ended up in the ICU. The two incidents created a media frenzy around the NFL, and out of nowhere League officials were pushed towards a conversation they really don’t want to have; there is a serious crime problem in the National Football League.
The Patriots’ Aaron Hernandez is led to the courthouse in handcuffs after being arrested on suspicion of 1st degree murder and 5 gun charges
The two arrests alone would easily have been enough to initiate a long, uncomfortable talk about crime in the NFL. But even beyond Hernandez and Walcott’s much publicised charges, a more in depth look at the NFL’s crime statistics paints a disturbing picture.
A number of media outlets, including Yahoo! Sports and CBS Sports, gave the NFL a huge headache last week when they revealed that a staggering 27 players have been arrested since the Superbowl in February, while a more recent report by USA Today claims that number has risen to 31. That’s a ratio of over 6 arrests per month, more than once a week, with crimes ranging from murder to misdemeanour DUI.
Here are just a few of those 31 arrests, to give you a flavour of the problem the NFL is facing:
Aaron Hernandez – 1st degree murder and 5 gun charges
Ausar Walcott – Attempted Murder
Titus Young Jnr – Various offences, including Burglary and DUI, spanning three arrests
Jason Peters – Street Racing and leading police on a high-speed chase
Adam Jones – Assault
Armonti Bryant – Drink Driving
Daryl Washington – Aggravated assault
Quentin Groves - Solicitation charges from a prostitution sting operation
Desmond Bryant – Criminal Mischief
Unfortunately, the string of arrests this year can’t even be waved off as an anomaly. In 2012, 40 players were arrested, including Josh Brent, who was charged with intoxication manslaughter in December, after a car accident that he caused led to the death of teammate Jerry Brown. In fact, before this off-season’s arrests, there had been a total of 489 arrests of NFL players for offenses more serious than speeding (and lesser traffic violations) in the last decade. This number is taken from the San Diego Union Tribune’s arrests database.
Among those arrests are a troubling number of cases involving violence against women. Chad Ochocinco was arrested after head-butting his new bride after an altercation; Des Bryant was arrested for assaulting his own mother; Adam “Pacman” Jones allegedly punched a girl outside a nightclub. The NFL is also the not-so-proud home for some of the more infamous criminal cases involving sportsmen in history, from the chillingly violent to the mind-numbingly stupid.
In 2009, Plaxico Burress was charged and convicted of criminal possession of a weapon and reckless endangerment – he shot himself in the leg in a nightclub, after the pistol that he had tucked into his sweatpants began slipping and accidentally discharged. In 2007, quarterback Michael Vick was sentenced to 23 months in jail after pleading guilty to a dog-fighting conspiracy.
The trial of OJ Simpson in 1995 was famous for the “If the glove doesn’t fit” defence
OJ Simpson stands as the most famous example, as his trial and subsequent acquittal made national headlines well beyond the sports pages, and is still infamous today. Simpson was acquitted in 1994 for the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman, after one of the most publicised criminal trials in history.
In an even more disturbing case, in 1999, Rae Carruth was convicted for conspiracy to commit murder after he arranged for the gunning down of his pregnant girlfriend, who he had killed because she wouldn’t agree to have an abortion for their unplanned baby.
Horror stories such as these simply do not exist to this extent in other sports. For the most part, the most troubling stories we hear from soccer and cricket players come from gambling or elicit affairs, not domestic abuse and homicide. Even rugby and ice hockey, sports which are comparable to football in terms of the anger and violence associated with them, do not have anything like the number of criminal problems that are so apparent in the NFL.
For both the sheer quantity of crimes being committed and the shocking nature of a select few of those crimes, the National Football League stands out for all the wrong reasons.
So with the evidence firmly stacked to one side, we’re ready to officially label this as a problem, right?
Well, apparently not everyone is.
Economist Stephen Bronars and Dan Lebowitz, the executive director of Sport in Society at Northeastern University, have both pointed out in recent interviews that statistically speaking the arrest rate in the NFL is much smaller than the national average for men of similar age; a fact that NFL Spokesman Greg Aiello was quick to remind us all of in his own statement.
The message being preached is that despite recent events instigating the panic, there really isn’t a crime problem in the NFL after all. Only around 1% of NFL players get arrested every year, while the national average for men the same age is closer to 11%.
In a recent article from ThinkProgress.org on the subject, one writer shared that sentiment. He wrote; “So why does the idea of the NFL’s “crime problem” persist? Part of it is that an arrested football player is an immediate media story [...] When fans can’t turn on a game without seeing someone who’s been arrested on the field, the idea that a crime problem exists is much easier to believe.”
The premise of the writer’s belief was that a crime problem does not exist, but simply appears to exist because it is all over the news coverage. The writer, like Steven Bronars and Dan Lebowitz, is missing the point. The statistics are not the important factor here; it is all about perception. There is a crime problem because you can’t turn on the TV without seeing an NFL player who’s been arrested.
When you are in the public eye, you are held to a higher standard than the rest of us, whether you like it or not. You are lifted up onto a pedestal, and while you are up there, you are exposed so that everyone can see you. That makes it your responsibility to set a good example. And for sports stars, and NFL players in particular, that holds especially true because it isn’t just adults watching you. The moment you put on an NFL jersey, you are a role-model to kids all over the world. That’s a part of the job, and it isn’t optional.
The NFL needs to wake up and stop living in denial. There is a crime problem, and statistics have nothing to do with it. The public don’t crunch numbers and compare them to national averages to form their opinions; they do it on a whim based on what they saturate from the media.
Players at colleges like Michigan play in front of crowds larger than any found at even a European Soccer match, and are idolised on campus by almost everyone they meet
And what they see is that for every humble, clean-cut Russell Wilson or Andrew Luck who represents everything good in the league, there is a Titus Young or an Aaron Hernandez being dragged out on the evening news in handcuffs. That is what the kids are seeing, and that is what has to be eliminated from the sport.
To know how to eliminate the problem, you first need to know what the problem is and from where it originates. In this instance, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what causes so many NFL players to rebel and turn to crime.
Some people think it is about having money. After all, NFL franchises are in the business of taking talented kids, often from poor and underprivileged communities, and making them instant millionaires. Obviously, there is an inherent risk involved with doing that.
A lot of these kids have lived without money their whole lives, and all of a sudden they can afford a Lamborghini without even breaking a sweat. That has an effect. Suddenly these young men want to party and show off, and that often means that they’re probably going to put themselves in a bad situation once or twice.
However, money isn’t the only catalyst for their troubles. Fame also plays a crucial part. In American high schools, players are coddled and babied with preferential treatment as soon as they begin showing athletic promise on the field. They then move on to college, where they are idolised on campus and treated like untouchable royalty.
No wonder they begin to think that they are above the rules. If you tell someone they are God long enough, eventually they’ll begin to believe it. By the time they get to the pros it is ingrained in their minds, and at that point they have both the ego and the money to think they can get away with things.
This is what the Players Association and the League need to combat. It may not be the NFL’s fault that these players have been moulded into egotistic, care-free criminals, but it is definitely their problem, and they have an obligation to do something about it. These amazingly overpaid, over-privileged and pampered sportsmen have absolutely no reason ever to raise even a solitary finger in anger, or to get behind a wheel drunk, and the League needs to remind them of that in no uncertain terms.
The good news is that we at least have the right Commissioner in place to instigate a change in culture. Arrests of NFL players were increasing annually until Roger Goodell took over as commissioner in 2006, and since then he has been very deliberate in coming down hard on players with any criminal violations.
CBS Sports host James Brown emphasised that when he appeared on CBS This Morning, saying “Roger Goodell has been very resolutely focused on cleaning up the league [...] He has come in under a law and order mandate, personal mandate, and that is going to be his legacy.”
Brown’s statement is entirely justified. Since Goodell’s inaugural season in 2006, when the arrest count hit a peak at 68, the number of NFL players arrested per year has fallen by nearly 40%. To give credit where it is due, progress has definitely been made.
With that in mind, this latest crime spree must be incredibly frustrating to Goodell. He has worked hard to disassociate criminality with the National Football League, and based on statistical evidence, he has been largely successful. But now, in the space of just 3 or 4 months, the actions of 31 players have ruined that. Crime is now at the top of the NFL agenda once again, and an entire country is waiting to see what the Commissioner is going to do about it.
When asked about the arrests recently, NFL spokesman Greg Aiello told USA TODAY Sports that the League took the stance that “One is too many.” The tough talk is all well and good, but now they have to prove that they mean it. Goodell’s programmes have been relatively effective in stemming the flow of NFL players being led away in handcuffs on the morning news. And yet here we are, still talking about a crime problem in the NFL. It seems obvious that more is needed.
The Commissioner and his administration need to face up to the fact that there is indeed a crime problem in the NFL, and to meet that problem with purpose. Without compromise, it is time for the League to adopt a zero tolerance policy towards the offenders and playboys who seem to think that their privileged lifestyles carry no responsibility, and to enforce it no matter what the cost to the team. If you misbehave, you are out. Period. Only then will we see these damaging elements truly rooted out and eradicated.
Will they be brave enough to actually do that? Your guess is as good as mine. Let’s hope they are, and let’s just pray that it happens quickly, before the next girlfriend is assaulted, pedestrian mown down or innocent victim murdered.
