The NFL is unbelievable! Are you kidding me?

[Drake the Dragonheart]

I Know this is a gaming site and sports, American-centric sports in particular take a back seat, but this really gets my blood burning!

Ok yes maybe I am just a bit biased in this instance since I bleed orange and blue, but this is still ridiculous.

Baltimore Ravens RB Ray Rice was suspended 2 games. For beating his girlfriend.

Last year Denver Broncos linebacker Von Miller was hit with a 6 game suspension for smoking weed.

That's right. According to the NFL, doing weed is 3 times a worse offense than beating women!
Browns WR Josh Gordon is looking at a season long suspension for weed. Granted it is his 3rd strike and I think there is also a DUI involved, but still. All this after they aired those advertisements with players talking about how more needs to be done to prevent domestic abuse. What hypocrites! Roger God-complex-ell needs to stop playing favorites.

I wonder how long Miller's suspension would have been if he had beat on women. Would Rice have been suspended at all if he had been caught doing weed?

A culture change in sports is needed, I think. If Kobe Bryant was any one of us, he would likely be behind bars right now. But because he leads the Lakers to championships and is really good at putting an orange sphere through a metal circle, he gets to laugh at the laws the rest of us obey. Ben Roethlisberger leads the Steelers to a Super Bowl, and everyone just forgets Ben likes to sleep with underage girls!

I apologize if this seems overly ranty, but this really bewilders me.

 

[shootthebandit]

I dont really get NFL but I can assure you that FIFA (the governing body of what you call soccer) is worse. They are incredibly corrupt. Players and fans not being penalised for racism on and off the pitch. Suarez has bitten several players (yes bitten) and been racist on the pitch and he has basically been rewarded with a move to barcelona

I bet that the NFL is nowhere near as bad as FIFA.

 

[Darks63]

As bad as the girlfriend beating is the thing that really bothers me is the fact that the NFL is exercising that level of control over their players lives. Any other job barring law enforcement you're not likely to see punishment if you got arrested while not on the job.

As for those athletes doging justice being both rich, popular, and well known helps their cause in that regard. Although I'll grant you that it is likely their owners have a hand in helping them out of trouble as well.

 

[Vegosiux]

I dont really get NFL but I can assure you that FIFA (the governing body of what you call soccer) is worse. They are incredibly corrupt. Players and fans not being penalised for racism on and off the pitch. Suarez has bitten several players (yes bitten) and been racist on the pitch and he has basically been rewarded with a move to barcelona

I bet that the NFL is nowhere near as bad as FIFA.

Ehhh, isn't Suarez currently suspended for I don't know how many games and months? And besides, it's not FIFA who sent him to Barcelona, so he's not being "rewarded" any more than any other player is "rewarded" when signing a new contract.

Now, that's not saying I like FIFA, but let's whack them for stuff they did do.

 

[Shadowstar38]

It's stupid that he was suspended at all. The NFL shouldn't have this much interest in their players personal lives. I'd say the same for Miller.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

It's stupid that he was suspended at all. The NFL shouldn't have this much interest in their players personal lives. I'd say the same for Miller.

Its in their contract.

Then again I suspect the standard NFL contract and the proverbial 'deal with the devil' are largely identical.

 

[Avaholic03]

It's stupid that he was suspended at all. The NFL shouldn't have this much interest in their players personal lives. I'd say the same for Miller.

It reflects poorly on the league, so yes they should have control over it. It happens in any business. If a public figure (like a CEO) embarrasses themselves, they usually get fired. If anything, the NFL is far too lenient, mostly because the public backlash for such incidents is usually minimal (and the players union steps in to prevent more harsh punishments) so they get away with these slaps on the wrist.

 

[ultratog1028]

Fifa and the Nfl can get away with these slap on the wrist punishments for one reason; Because we will still watch them regardless. Unfortunatly that kind of needs to stop, put nobody wants to stop. Fans are too invested. It's sad.

 

[kuiper]

Last year Denver Broncos linebacker Von Miller was hit with a 6 game suspension for smoking weed.

That's right. According to the NFL, doing weed is 3 times a worse offense than beating women!
Browns WR Josh Gordon is looking at a season long suspension for weed. Granted it is his 3rd strike and I think there is also a DUI involved, but still. All this after they aired those advertisements with players talking about how more needs to be done to prevent domestic abuse. What hypocrites! Roger God-complex-ell needs to stop playing favorites.

actually, if I remember correctly, if he would have just admitted to doing the weed instead of falsifying his drug test, he would have had a lesser game penalty. me and my dad are broncos fans and it grinded my dad's gears on how stupid his punishment was in the end.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Baltimore Ravens RB Ray Rice was suspended 2 games. For beating his girlfriend.

Last year Denver Broncos linebacker Von Miller was hit with a 6 game suspension for smoking weed.

That's right. According to the NFL, doing weed is 3 times a worse offense than beating women!

Just for a little clarification (and one can still argue the rights and wrong of this) a big reason Von Miller was suspended for the amount of time he was is because he attempted to cheat on his drug test:
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/9707976/von-miller-denver-broncos-urine-collector-tried-cheat-test

It's stupid that he was suspended at all. The NFL shouldn't have this much interest in their players personal lives. I'd say the same for Miller.

NFL players are essentially celebrities, and thus, whether they like it or not, what they do in their personal lives is considered a reflection on the NFL. The NFL is a private organization and if it deems that the person made their organization look bad, they have every right to fire or suspend them.

It'd be like if you got arrested for public intoxication and urinating in public while in the uniform of whatever company you worked for. It reflects poorly on the company and thus they have an incentive to drop you. In the case of celebrities, they don't have to be in a uniform because people know who they are. Like it or not, it kinda goes with the territory of being a highly paid pro athlete.

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

IMO, the fact still remains that the NFL inflicted a harsher penalty on a player who tried to fake the organization's drug test than they did on a player who caused bodily harm to another human being, and a woman at that. Remember: a football player is built to be a human-smashing machine - toned, fit, powerful, and trained to take damage as well as deal it. Can you say the same about his girlfriend? How much of a chance did she stand against him?

(And yes, I know that RBs aren't built like linemen, but they aren't puny lightweights either).

I agree with the OP - the disparity in punishments is fucking absurd considering the offenses that warranted them. And I'm not just saying that because I live in Denver.

 

[Queen Michael]

It's stupid that he was suspended at all. The NFL shouldn't have this much interest in their players personal lives. I'd say the same for Miller.

Its in their contract.

Then again I suspect the standard NFL contract and the proverbial 'deal with the devil' are largely identical.

Well, nobody's claiming the contract doesn't allow this; we're saying it shouldn't.

 

[UltraPic]

If Kobe Bryant was any one of us, he would likely be behind bars right now. But because he leads the Lakers to championships and is really good at putting an orange sphere through a metal circle, he gets to laugh at the laws the rest of us obey.

It's safe to say, if he was one of us the situation would never have happened, not to discount rape in any way but honey traps are very real for such people.

 

[GrimTuesday]

IMO, the fact still remains that the NFL inflicted a harsher penalty on a player who tried to fake the organization's drug test than they did on a player who caused bodily harm to another human being, and a woman at that. Remember: a football player is built to be a human-smashing machine - toned, fit, powerful, and trained to take damage as well as deal it. Can you say the same about his girlfriend? How much of a chance did she stand against him?

(And yes, I know that RBs aren't built like linemen, but they aren't puny lightweights either).

Lineman (offensive linemen anyway) do not go in the same sentence as the word toned, and I say this as someone who played a lot of offensive line.

For those of you who don't think that this is ridiculous, here is an excellent comic dramatizing a similar situation.

Spoiler

If you are a football fan and don't read The Draw Play [http://www.thedrawplay.com/] you are doing youself a disservice.

Whether or not you think that the league should be able to punish players for their actions off the field or not, the fact is that beating your wife or girlfriend or whatever is unacceptable no matter what. If the league is going to go on a fucking crusade against pot (which now legal in two states by the way), it should damn well be treating situations such as this with the same doggedness if not more so.

 

[omega 616]

In America Celebs and sports stars are revered, they are mega rich but are given things (like phones) paid to wear clothes from certain people etc people almost (probably in some cases literally) worship the ground they walk on. In England and other countries with a heavy football crowd, they have football hooligans ... people who beat the fuck out of each other for liking a different team.

So the fact they can get away with shit isn't exactly new or surprising, even when they do break a serious law (murder for example) they can hire the best lawyers to get very cushy punishments (not all the time but it happens)

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

Lineman (offensive linemen anyway) do not go in the same sentence as the word toned, and I say this as someone who played a lot of offensive line.

Okay, then I'll replace "toned" with "sentient cheesecake vacuum." Is that about right?

(Just kidding ya... I'm a full-time smartass.)

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

Who cares about the football league? What about the actual law getting involved in this?

 

[wadark]

If this were in regard to some on-field offense, or at least something related to the activities of football, I would agree. But given the severity of what he did, I'm far less interested in the league's punishment of him than I am in what the law does to him. Chances are, if charges are filed and he's convicted, he'd be released from his team anyway.

 

[Brian Tams]

Two things.

1. The way I understand it, Ray Rice got off easy with the law for three reasons: 1) He is rich, and thus can afford expensive lawyers 2. He actually convinced his girlfriend to marry him shortly after he was convicted (which is extremely depressing for me to read about) which means she can not be called to trial as a witness against Ray 3) Ray Rice agreed to enter a "pre-trial intervention program" (whatever the fuck that means) that basically amounts to a slap on the wrist, because he was a first offender. This pisses me off because Ray Rice initially plead not guilty, but is going to enter a program that will involve reeducation to prevent future incidents? Um... sure.

2 The more disturbing thing is that there's a player who's facing a season long suspension for barely failing a marijuana test (a test he took twice, and only failed once mind you).

Yeah, great message you're sending NFL.