Domestic violence. Sexual assault. Sexual harassment. What all three of these have in common is the terrible reactions to incidents by the sports world, especially college sports. First it was Ray Rice, then it was Greg Hardy, Adrian Peterson, Baylor University, Brock Turner, Josh Brown, and the latest is Joe Mixon. The incident involving Mixon happened back in 2014 on the same day that Ray Rice received his original two-game suspension, but the video wasn’t released until this past week. For this incident, Mixon was given a yearlong suspension from all Oklahoma related football activities; however, there were reports that despite the suspension, Mixon was still seen at team activities. The time is long overdue that we started doing a better job of holding individuals, universities, and professional teams accountable for what happens off the field.
To put it bluntly, there is no place in any level of athletics for someone who commits sexual assault, sexually harasses women, or commits an act of violence. I completely understand that sometimes people don’t act like themselves and act like they shouldn’t, but that doesn’t mean that these people belong on the field. When a person who is the normal workforce commits these crimes, they don’t have the opportunity to get a second chance, so what makes these people any different? The answer is that there isn’t any aspect that makes them any difference and society needs to start acting as such.
When society continues to ignore these issues, we make people who commit these crimes think that it isn’t a big deal. When that happens, you have more of these players who think that they can get away with it because no one wants to deal with it. It develops a culture that deems it acceptable to hit or rape a woman without there being a legitimate punishment, it spreads throughout the team and players believe that the university or organization will just turn a blind eye to it. Baylor is the best example of this because a university official buried so many allegations over a five year period, that players felt like nothing would happen to them. So the players continued to rape and harass women because the university would rather have them on the field than sitting out on the sidelines or dismissing them from the program.
The sports world has been behind the rest of society when it comes to domestic violence, sexual assault, and sexual harassment. If there was any group that needs to be ahead of these issues, it is athletics because these people are often looked up to by the youth. These players should be examples for how the youth should act; letting players who commit these crimes stay on the field is a mistake because it shows the youth that if they become athletes, these crimes no longer matter to them and they can get away with anything. Joe Mixon wasn’t the first and he certainly won’t be the last, but there needs to be a shift in culture. The industry elites need to make it clear that domestic violence, sexual assault, and sexual harassment matter more to them than winning in order to fix this terrible culture.
