"National Felons League" - Uncovering the crime epidemic in the NFL

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.