Personal Conduct, The NFL, and Why We Need the Law

I don't know why I find the NFL's personal conduct policy–and lack of outstanding personal conduct–so fascinating. Maybe I view it as a problem that needs to be solved. Maybe it just happens to be what the sports guys are talking about on ESPN Radio. Whatever the reason, I've spent more than a little time pondering how they can fix the problem that they've made for themselves.

One of the challenges they are facing currently is that it appears they have no clearly spelled out guidelines for dealing with players who have been charged with a crime. Drug policy? Fine. But criminal policy? It doesn't look like it. Consequently, they are all over the map when it comes to handing out punishments. Some players can play through the trial until they are convicted. Others, like Adrian Peterson, has to sit down while the trial pans out. And then, even when an official punishment is given from the NFL, they have been wildly inconsistent.

So let me make a few points to help out the NFL, even though no one is asking.

First, focus on crime, not specific crime. Domestic abuse is wrong, and while it's terrible that the NFL had to deal with a couple of players who got caught, it's great that they've funded the PR campaign to end it. It would have been much more effective and genuine had they done it before their players got caught, but hey, you take what you can get. 

Here's a better option, though. It's not just domestic abuse. It's all crime. Let's stop picking and choosing which crimes are bad enough to get suspended for and maybe just put a general, "here's what happens if you break the law" clause in their contracts or in the NFL, generally. Let's not wait until there is a public outcry before we do anything about it. Decide that you aren't going to employ criminals, and start from there.

I understand that not all crimes are equal. Take that into consideration. But be clear about what you are really looking for: players who model good citizenship by following the law.

Second, clearly draw the boundaries. Who gets suspended, and when? Is it when they are accused of a crime? Or when they are indicted for a crime? When they are formally convicted? When does the NFL suspension and personal conduct policy kick in?

It certainly needs to be more formal than a simple accusation. Otherwise, you'd have people start making accusations just because they held a grudge. How about a formal, legal indictment? Now maybe we're on to something.

I think the conduct policy should kick in the moment they are formally charged with a crime. We need to respect the legal process and surely we don't want to go beyond it by assuming guilt when there may not be any. On the other hand, I'm perfectly comfortable telling a football player that if they are charged with a crime, they can't come in to work. The commissioners list seems like a reasonable option. The player gets paid, but they are not allowed to play. It is paid leave. The company is asking you not to show up for work while the criminal charges get worked out.

Third, put more pressure on the teams. Make the crime policy so stringent that teams will second guess drafting or signing a player who might potentially break the law. Obviously, you can't always predict when someone will break the law, but knowing that the policy is tight and strict means that, if I know that one of my guys could be ineligible to play football because of his off-the-field activities, I'm either not going to sign that guy, or I'm going to provide him with some life-training while he's a part of my organization so that he doesn't ever get taken off the field because of a stupid decision. 

Yes, players need to take responsibility for their own actions and choices, and it's not fair to blame someone else for decisions that they made. But as long as they think that they can get away with it, or that teams will help them cover it up rather than deal with the root of the problem, they are going to keep misbehaving. If you make it so that a football player can't get a deal with a team unless he's living by the rules, you might find that the player in question starts to shape up.

Fourth, be consistent. When you don't have a policy clearly spelled out, you're liable to operate out of fear or popular opinion. Roger Goodell seems to be doing both. After screwing up the Ray Rice punishment by giving him only a two game suspension, he evoked such outrage among the general populous that he went in the extreme opposite direction in the suspension that followed, and then did the same with the suspension of Adrian Peterson. In the case of the latter, he had theoretically already put in place the personal conduct policy which said that the first offense of domestic violence was a six week suspension. Apparently there was some wiggle room in there, but in general, six weeks was what was articulated. Peterson has already functionally served an 8 or 9 week suspension (with pay), and yet, he was further suspended for the rest of the season. (For the record, even if he got "time served" for those 8 or 9 weeks on the commissioners list, he still should have had to pay back a majority of the money that he earned during that time, since he would not have gotten paid the full amount had it been an official suspension.) My issue isn't that the suspensions are or aren't justified, good, bad, or whatever. It's just that they are inconsistent. If a first offense is six weeks, then make it six weeks every time. And if six weeks isn't enough, then change the policy. But don't arbitrarily hand out punishments without the ability to be consistent across the board.

The last thing I'll say is that playing football is a job for these players. As such, they should have very similar workplace employment policies that every other company does. But it's also more than a job. It's a privilege. These guys get to play the game that they love, and get paid a ton of money to do it. Good for them. For me, that sets the bar higher. If you really love this game, and you want the privilege to get paid to do it, that ought to be motivation enough to act like a normal person and not break the law.

The NFL is not our Morality Compass

Inasmuch as I continue to hear outrage over Tony Dungy's comments regarding the drafting of Michael Sam, I wanted to post at least once more to help clarify my thoughts. I'm frustrated at what I see as the inability of the general public to separate what I see as the real issue–in this case, the distraction a player brings to a team verses their overall talent–and the much more sensitive issue of a persons's sexual preference.

Let me again make something clear, that I believe Tony Dungy would agree with (based on his statements): Michael Sam should be be given every opportunity to play in the NFL, regardless of his sexual preference. Can we just get that out of the way? The frustrating part of this whole "controversy" is that we seem to have a difficult time separating what Tony Dungy believes, personally–that marriage is between a man and a women–and how he would operate as an NFL coach. I wonder, if Dungy had never made his personal beliefs public, or if it wasn't a known fact that he was an evangelical Christian, if his initial statement in the Tribune would have even been picked up as controversial.

I don't expect the NFL to be the nations morality compass. It's just not their job. The NFL, as a money-making organization, will respond to the morality compass of culture, but they won't set the standard. At least, they shouldn't. And to the degree that Tony Dungy would apply his personal morality to the drafting process or to the NFL as a whole, I think he's mistaken. I simply don't believe that's what he's doing.

The argument presented against Dungy is that he has, in the past, encouraged the signing of players who came with significant, off the field, distractions. The most common example is that he was a supporter of Michael Vick. The question that I think is wrongly raised, in an attempt to make Dungy look like a hypocrite, is whether Sam's sexual preference is somehow more immoral than Vick's dog-fighting. Of course, the obvious answer is "no", if the issue is about morality. But it's not. The issue is about a) whether a player deserves a chance (yes, in both cases) and b) whether their on the field performance is worth the risk of their off the field distraction. Again, the NFL is not the morality police. The issue really shouldn't be about the cause of the distractions; it should be about the distraction itself (as I said in my last post). I assume that their decision ought to be, and is, based on net-gain to the team and what will bring in the most wins, and the most money. If that's true, then one could make the case that signing Vick, even with the greater "wrong", had a higher net-gain to his team than drafting Sam.

That said, I think I understand where the criticism is coming from. Those who have derided Dungy's comments have largely done so because they believe that, no matter what Sam's talent level, it is worth the risk and the distraction so that people who are afraid to "come out" have a role model in the NFL. They have someone they can look up to who had the courage to say, "I'm gay", and let the chips fall where they may. In the long run, the "chips" that fall will be fewer and fewer. But someone has to go first. In this case, it was Michael Sam. We should be willing to support that, no matter what the distractions may be to our organization.

Of course, that is also applying a certain morality to the drafting process. According to that line of reasoning, Sam should be be given an advantage precisely because he is gay, even if his talent level doesn't necessarily justify his acquisition in terms of net-gain to the team. Typically, a player's off the field distraction will be measured against his on the field performance, resulting in either a net gain to the team or a net loss. ("Talent + Miscellany = Net Gain".) The argument in this case is that, regardless of the distraction, and regardless of the net gain, someone has to go first, and every NFL team should support it and should have drafted him no matter what. That's why the comparison to Jackie Robinson comes up so often. What isn't typically mentioned, of course, is the fact that Jackie Robinson was an all-star caliber player. The Brooklyn Dodgers didn't just "break the barrier", by having Robinson play. They added a significant talent to their team that made them better, and ultimately, probably made them more money. Would they have been willing to "break the barrier" with a guy who was going to sit in the dugout the whole game? Surely, they had the opportunity to do it, but they didn't.

I'm not saying that if the NFL wants to break the "gay barrier" they need to wait until there is a player who is all-star caliber to do it. I am saying that if Michael Sam was a guaranteed pro-bowler, Dungy would have never said what he did. I think his response to the question of whether or not he would have drafted him would have been, "of course!" It's a football decision, not a morality decision.

I recognize that those who passionately argue against Dungy see the cause as being greater than football. The upside, culturally, to have an NFL team draft Sam is worth whatever distraction or risk the NFL team who drafted him will have to take on. I'd argue that it's not on the NFL to make drafting decisions based on morality or "cultural upside". It's a business, and they ought to draft whoever offers the the most net-gain as an organization, regardless of their sexual preference.

So would Dungy draft a gay player? Of course he would. As an NFL coach, (personal belief aside), I don't think he cares much about a players sexual preference. He's looking for the player who provides the most upside to the team. But would he draft Michael Sam? Probably not. Because in Sam's case, the talent didn't justify the media distraction that it received, resulting in a net loss for the organization.

There's a big difference between those two questions and responses. Again, I emphasize: good for the St. Louis Rams for deciding that the distraction of hiring Sam relative to his level of talent, maybe even as a result of what they saw as the "cultural upside", was worth it. I just don't think we should demonize someone who says that, in this case, they probably wouldn't have made that choice.

The Real Reason Dungy Stepped in It

Well, Tony Dungy stepped in it. Of course nowaday's you can step in it at any moment, without ever realizing that there was an "it" there to begin with.

Dungy was asked a simple question: would you have drafted Michael Sam? He said no. The reason? Because there was going to be a lot of distraction surrounding him as a player. 

Let's consider what he's saying. Every NFL organization drafts players based on, at least, this very simplistic formula: 

TALENT + MISCELLANY = NET GAIN TO THE TEAM

Talent is the first item to consider. How good is this player? How good will they ultimately be? On a purely football level, is this player going to make a significant contribution to the team?

Miscellany (almost certainly not the term used by NFL Execs) is an extremely broad category that includes, but is not limited to, personality type, religious beliefs, and general off-the-field elements that might be a distraction. One distraction might be excessive media attention for something unrelated to the actual game of football.

Talent, plus miscellany, equals net gain. So an extremely talented player, for example, has a high gross margin that allows themself the ability to be quite distracting off the field. Most teams are going to deal with it because, at the end of the day, the net gain to the team is still in the positive. A player that is only marginally talented, however, may want to keep his nose clean so that they can be judged solely based on their talent as a football player.

I'm convinced that Tim Tebow probably doesn't have a job in the NFL because of the fact that his talent level couldn't overcome the unbelievable media circus that followed him around. Was "Tebow-mania" a distraction to, say, Mark Sanchez when Tebow was on the Jets? It sure looked like it. As a result, the net gain of adding Tebow to the roster was actually a negative. Other teams took notice, and it almost certainly played a roll in his inability to get a spot on anyone's roster, even if, at the end of the day, he had the talent for one of those roster spots.  His talent, alone, may have gotten him a back-up spot somewhere. But the teams didn't want the distraction of all that came with Tim Tebow.

One response to this is to say that the NFL is bigotted and discriminatory towards Christians. That is, after all, the reason that Tebow got so much attention. He was an outspoken Evangelical in a day and age when most Evangelicals feel like they should just keep their mouths shut. The Evangelicals like having someone they can look up to that speaks their language. And maybe it's true. Maybe the NFL is discriminatory towards Christians. But I doubt it. The NFL likes whoever brings in the most cash, and the quickest way to more cash is to have players who make your team better.

A far better response, then, is to simply understand that most NFL teams decided that there was no net-gain to adding Tebow to the roster. Talent alone? Maybe. But add in the media circus and the crazed fans calling for the coach to put him in everytime your starting quarterback bobbles a snap and you end up with not a net gain, but a net loss. No NFL owner wants that.  So they decided to pass, almost exclusively based on the fact that Tebow comes with a boat-load of distraction that his talent level doesn't justify. It just so happens that the distraction level is a result of his religious faith.

Let's move on to Michael Sam. Dungy said he wouldn't have drafted him because of the distractions, and then clarified to say that it was, in essence, because the distractions weren't justified by his level of talent. That is to say that the unfortunate truth for Michael Sam is that by being the "first" anything, you receive a lot more media attention than you probably want, and based solely the standard of your talent, more than you deserve. 

Does Michael Sam deserve a shot at playing? No question. If anyone discriminated against him based solely on the fact that he was gay, they would be a bigot, as would any team who discriminated against Tebow based solely on the fact that he was a Christian. I just don't think anyone did that. 

But then, that's not really the issue. 

The real reason that Tony Dungy is coming under fire is that basically, he admitted that he doesn't think that homosexual rights take priority over the game of football, or at very least, something he personally does not prioritize over the game of football. What culture wants from everyone, including NFL coaches, is to recognize that the rights of the homosexual person are more important than anything else, including religious conviction, or in this case, wins (or perhaps more shrewdly, money). In other words, who cares whether it's a net gain or a net loss for your team? This is bigger than football. Isn't it a net gain for all of us?

(Remember what Dungy said..."things will happen". What if Sam doesn't get a spot on the roster, or if he never plays? Is the Ram's organization run by bigots? Or would it be okay to make a "football decision" then, even if it means that the first openly gay player drafted into the NFL doesn't become the first openly gay player to play in the NFL?) 

That's why Dungy stepped in it, even though his comments were basically benign. Culture believes that sexual preference is more important than wins for a football team, locker room comfort, or money.  Dungy says he, as a coach, was more interested in what was best for the football team (which, of course, is exactly what he was paid to do as an NFL coach.)

I know it's hard to separate the cause of the distraction from the distraction itself, but I hope we can. It's not Tebow's fault that the media hyped his evangelicalism. It's not Sam's fault that he's receiving the hype for his sexuality. Unfortunately for both of them, that type of distraction works against you when you're not one of the supremely talented dudes your organization is willing to put up with because you might single-handedly win them some football games. Maybe Sam & Tebow should get together for lunch. I'm sure they could commiserate.

Good for the Rams for following their convictions and deciding that even if Sam was a net loss for their organization in terms of football, it was worth the loss in order to give him a shot. I just don't think we should demonize a coach for saying that he probably wouldn't have been willing to do that.