On Thursday, May 26th, Art Briles was officially fired from the position of head coach of the Baylor University football team. This came following an investigation into accusations saying the university not only failed to discipline players charged with abuse but that the students who came forward with these claims were discouraged from attempting to report these players and even going far enough to retaliate against a girl who claimed to have been assaulted.
But the thing is, these charges are nowhere near the first abuse charges to come out in sports in the last year, or the last month, or even last week! Hold on, hold on. Briles wasn’t even the only domestic abuse news on Thursday. Earlier in the day an outfielder who plays for the Atlanta Braves named Hector Olivera was suspended by major league baseball for 82 games.
In the last calendar year, there have been suspensions handed out to baseball players like Aroldis Chapman, Jose Reyes, the aforementioned Olivera and there was an investigation into a case involving Yasiel Puig. In football, it’s easy enough to just list players who have been accused of domestic abuse. But very rarely are they properly punished by the league.
Look at what happened when Ray Rice was accused. It was widely known that he’d been arrested for assault on February 15th, but the NFL did nothing. Then a video was released by TMZ of Rice dragging his girlfriend's body out of an elevator.
I’ll pause for a second for you to think about this. The NFL claimed they could not find this video during their investigation into this case, yet TMZ was able to find it in a couple of days. Really consider that,
After the video was released of Rice pulling his girlfriend's body out of an elevator the Ravens as an organization came out in support of Rice. First head coach John Harbaugh, then general manager Ozzie Newsome, then owner Steve Bisciotti. All three completely on Rice’s side.
A little more than a month after the initial incident NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was asked if the league was aware of the incident and if there would be discipline, his response was “yes, and I don’t know on the second part”.
The league knew this man had physically abused his girlfriend and was unsure if there would be punishment.
On July 24th, more than 6 months later, Rice was suspended for 2 games. 2 games.
On September 8th video was released showing Rice actually punching his girlfriend (now wife) in the face on the elevator. Then on that day, he was released by the Ravens and suspended indefinitely by the NFL. It had been reported that the NFL had seen the full video including the punch long before.
The question becomes, why and how could this possibly happen in a situation that is completely in the public eye? What I can see is it all comes down to one thing.
The public believes that what happens on the field trumps whatever happens off of it. As long as you produce during games it doesn’t matter what you do when you are away from the team.
And that is one of the saddest things I have ever thought about.
It isn’t just domestic abuse either, Donte’ Stallworth flat out killed a guy in 2009 while driving drunk. He served 24 days of a 30-day jail suspension. I’ll reiterate, if you play well on the field it doesn’t matter what you do off the field.
I like to pride myself on being an impartial, and objective, sports fan. Athletes are not gods among men to me like they are to so many people, I don’t consider them to be a better person than someone who isn’t an athlete like it seems many people do. These are, in general, men who have achieved whatever they’ve wanted for most of their lives. These were the kids who dreamed of playing professional sports and were good enough to keep dreaming. Many of the top players haven’t heard someone say no to them in a long time.
Just because they involve athletes does not mean these cases are about sports. We need to stop thinking that these men (and sometimes women, see Hope Solo) are any better than anyone else. Because I don’t care who it is this is never ok.
Going back to Art Briles, the reports say he knew about the many cases of assault charged against his players and he routinely covered them up and tried to keep them out of the public eye without punishing players. But he is a coach who took a terrible team and made them one of the best in the country. To me, it’s pretty obvious that he shouldn’t get another coaching job ever, and maybe he won’t. This has become an issue that many people care about recently and organizations want to look as good as possible to the public. So maybe this time and in future circumstances like this, punishments will be more severe and these athletes and coaches will get what they deserve. But look at the history of these cases in sports and they’ll tell you that isn’t how sports works.
People have short memories and for some reason, we as a society seem to forget some of the worst things possible.
Briles should never have another job, Rice probably won’t (but look at his stats from his last two years and tell me he’d be a starter without this happening), Chapman, Reyes and Olivera should be out of the league. But I know that isn’t how sports work.
