Amidst Sagging Rating and Falling Attendance, NFL Engulfed in New Scandal
The National Football League can’t seem to get out of their own way. Starving for a nugget of good news to counter the anthem protest fiasco, declining viewership, and uninspiring playoff races, the hits just keep coming.
Word has filtered out that the high-profile owner of the Carolina Panthers, Jerry Richardson, will sell the team following the 2017-2018 season. The reason is linked to a Sports Illustrated report, which disclosed Richardson’s involvement in monetary payouts to settle both sexual misconduct and racially inappropriate slurs. The settlements came with non-disclosure requirements forbidding the parties from discussing the details. But now that the NFL has gotten wind of it, the cat is out of the bag and Richardson is being forced to sell. (Source: “Facing misconduct investigation, Panthers owner Richardson selling team,” CNBC, December 18, 2017.)
So in one fell swoop, Richardson has managed to hit on two detriment bugaboos the league was looking to avoid. The first is sexual misconduct, which the NFL had managed to sidestep until recently. That all changed when the Vice President and Executive Editor for NFL Media, David Eaton, went into a frenzied attempt to delete “years worth” of tweets he had sent to adult film stars and escorts. (Source: “NFL Network exec deletes Twitter account after exchanges with porn stars, escorts exposed,” Fox News, December 14, 2018.)
While that conduct isn’t exactly illegal, it doesn’t do the NFL’s image any favors. Jerry Richardson’s revelations pile on to a new scandal the NFL desperately seeks to avoid.
The second faux pas is the always thorny issue of race relations. With the league-wide anthem protests still causing headaches for the NFL, Richardson’s comments could exacerbate tensions between owners and players even further. White of black racial epitaphs are unlikely to sit well with players increasingly prone to acting out on social causes.
The NFL has already sent an olive branch to persuade players to stop anthem protests. This came way of a $100.0-million “bribe” Roger Goodell and company offered for various social justice causes. So far, the players have not relented. Now, the alleged Richardson racial slurs undermine the NFL’s intentions to make things right with the players, many whom feel they disrespected and treated like chattel under ownership.
Could the NFL Be Facing Its “Donald Sterling” Moment?
It’s been almost four years since the National Basketball Association was rocked with its own racially charged scandal. It’s something no sports league has ever wanted to emulate.
On April 25, 2014, TMZ Sports released a recording of a conversation between Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling and his mistress, Vanessa Stiviano. Upset about an Instagram photo Stiviano took with Basketball Hall of Fame player Magic Johnson, Sterling said, “It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people,” and, “You can sleep with [black people]. You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want,” but, “the little I ask you is…not to bring them to my games” (Source: “Everything You Need to Know About V. Stiviano, the Woman Who Recorded Donald Sterling’s Racism,” New York, April 28, 2014.)
The response by players and league was both stern and decisive. L.A. Clippers teammates held a meeting one day after the incident to discuss the possibility of boycotting Game 4 of their playoff series against the Golden State Warriors on April 27 before deciding against it. Instead, they elected to wear their warmup shirts inside-out in order to obscure the team logo during their pre-game huddle. Two days later, players of the Miami Heat did the same thing “in solidarity” with the Clippers.
The NBA’s most powerful player, LeBron James, didn’t take the situation lying down. Commenting on the situation, James said, “There’s no room for Donald Sterling in the NBA”. (Source: “LeBron James: ‘No room for Donald Sterling in NBA,’” NBA.com, April 26, 2017)
This was echoed by a who’s-who of past NBA stars, including Kevin Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal, and Kobe Bryant.
Finally, on April 29, 2017, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver dropped the hammer. Silver announced that Sterling had been banned from the league for life and fined $2.5 million, the maximum fine allowed by the NBA constitution. Sterling would be banned from entering the Clippers practice facility or attending any NBA games. Moreover, Silver stated he would force Sterling to sell the team based on a willful violations of the League’s ownership agreement, which could strip owners of franchise rights if 75% of league owners consented. This measure later passed with ease.
Ultimately, the NBA’s punishment was universally deemed as the harshest ever dished out to a league owner of any major professional franchise.
Verdict
While Richardson’s racial slurs don’t provide the inflammatory soundbite necessary to make the Sterling comparison completely comparable, the NFL faces a new round of headaches. The owner-player relationship cannot be trending upwards, considering the huge effect the anthem protests are having on attendance and viewership.
Certain black players–already prone to social justice tendencies–now have a new cause to fight for. The Richardson revelations counter the olive branch the NFL has extended to players by way of a nine-figure donation.
Furthermore, the sexual misconduct allegations will do nothing to help the NFL extricate itself from hot-button issues conservative football fans seek to ‘escape’ from. As ESPN is finding out, sports fans want less politics in sports, not more. By injecting these distractions into the fold, the NFL has entered the domain of (previously relegated to beltway) politics and the liberal corporate media.
Sports fans simply want to watch sports. And that becomes infinitely harder when team owners are viewed as misogynist or racist.