Ben Wallace-Wells has an interesting piece at TNR about Ben Roethlisberger and the NFL and the question of image. He recounts a story involving NFL commissioner Roger Goodell from Sports Illustrated:
The lug in question was Ben Roethlisberger, the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback, who had been accused of rape for the second time in a year, in this instance by a 20-year-old college student in Georgia. Arming himself for the conversation, Goodell had talked to two dozen other players, including other Steelers. "Not one, not a single player, went to his defense," Goodell told Sports Illustrated. The vanity of the quarterback is that he is such a beloved leader that his teammates forgive even his transgressions.
Big Ben, as they call him, is definitely a thug and a cad. From later down in the piece:
One evening last March, this small-town icon was in a Milledgeville, Georgia, bar to celebrate his twenty-eighth birthday. He walked up to a young woman with whom he'd been flirting ("all my bitches, take some shots!") with his penis hanging out of his pants, according to the handwritten account she gave police later that night, and led her into a bar bathroom where he raped her. Her friends tried to get into the bathroom, but Roethlisberger's private security team barred the door. When she finally left, she went outside with her friends, searched for the first police car she could find, and told the officer she'd been raped. Charges were eventually dropped, after the victim declined to pursue the case, but the moral contours of the situation, from the court documents, seem as stark as those that condemned Mike Tyson?and sent him to prison.
Of course we have only the woman's word, but in any case he's not exactly a prince.
Wallace-Wells weaves this into a larger narrative about "caveman" behavior in the league, and certainly with regard to such a violent game it's an easy charge to make. And for those of you who don't know, the question of "cheap shot" tackles and needlessly aggressive hits (helmet-to-helmet, say) has been under sharp scrutiny this year.
There's no question that the league has a very male cover-up culture. That Roethlisberger received only a four game suspension shocked me. He should have been suspended for the entire season, including post-season play. A full year in solitary. Others would get that message for sure.
All that said, I'm just not sure there's a sociopath problem in the NFL any greater than in any other high-end line of work. There are probably as many rapists per capita among Wall Streeters or corporate leaders (that is, men with money and power, like pro football players) as among NFL players. My guess would be more, in fact. And NFL players are widely known for their charitable work with disabled children and what have you in the cities where they play. And finally, a high percentage of them are quite religious.
There are a lot of things about NFL that bug me. It's kind of a - and I used this word extremely loosely and figuratively, okay? - neo-fascist organization. It demands complete control over everything it touches. There was a story a couple of years ago that the league forced sideline photographers to wear a new kind of vest (to identify themselves as media), and the level of detail was just insane. If neo-fascist is too strong for you, then let's just say it's very 1984.
But as for the players, I maintain continually that the vast majority of them are surprisingly decent people. The Steelers' quarterback ain't one of them. Go Packers! If you watched my video, you know that I predicted Green Bay 30-28, but that was mostly because I can't possibly be comfortable predicting that Roethlisberger will win another Super Bowl, although unfortunately I suspect he might.
What are your predictions? And what are you going to eat? I think I've settled on Italian sausages (turkey, to cut down on the fat) with broccoli rabe and provolone cheese and lots of fresh sauteed garlic on ciabatta bread. It's an oily and messy sandwich with the rapini tumbling out all over the place, and man is it delicious.
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