It’s more than the game that matters in NFL

IT’S hard to avoid this repeated hand wringing about the NFL and its inability to stay opaque in our overwhelmingly transparent era of journalism.

But the hits keep coming and the soul searching becomes ever more exasperated. I’m sure most of the players are good guys — that’s the law of averages in any profession.

But in the space of a week four players hit the headlines for varying degrees of basic inhumanity to another human being.

Sports Illustrated writer Peter King — who has even found himself on the dartboard for his less than perfect reporting of what the NFL knew and didn’t know about Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice’s domestic abuse case — admitted this past Monday that one day he may live to regret the role he currently occupies: he is after all the most well regarded and well sourced NFL writer in the game.

King didn’t have any clear advice for fans as to how they should react to news that Adrian Peterson physically abused one of his young sons.

And this was before it emerged that the Minnesota running back — one of the best players of the past half-decade — was investigated but not charged after another similar incident with a different son two years back.

There was a report, according to the sportswriter, that a league of friends playing fantasy NFL disbanded and donated their buy-in fees to charity.

That was seemingly their way of washing their hands of a sport in which a minority seem to be unhinged. The Carolina Panthers defender Greg Hardy who threw a girlfriend onto a futon of loaded weapons during a beating that was witnessed by neighbours who were in turn believed by a judge... was prevented from playing this past weekend, a last minute decision.

For the record, Hardy is taking the opportunity to have his case heard by a jury so he occupies that no man’s land of guilty until proven innocent.

But if nothing else it made up for the potentially even murkier goings on with a fellow professional of Hardy who plies his trade with the San Francisco 49ers.

The 49ers have decided that they are going to maintain giving the benefit of the doubt to a defensive end called Ray McDonald. Unlike Hardy he was not dropped and played the first two games of this season. His case is at investigation stage accusations although arguably it could be as serious, if not more so, because it is alleged that he assaulted his pregnant fiancée.

Are you outraged or bored or numb? I’m not sure what I am. A little confused maybe but then former professional and current TV analyst Chris Carter went on a rant for the ages on Sunday morning. Sounding like he was about to cry, he spoke of a sister that was raped and a cousin that was raped.

“We don’t respect our women and we don’t respect our children,” he said later with devastating simplicity and conviction. All that matters is the game, he added, and players only respect the game. Take their games away. That’s when they’ll listen.

Maybe he’s right. None of us knows what exactly it takes to be the best at what you do. These footballers — let’s just stay with them to make things less confusing — are the best at school and one of the best at college.

They’re worshipped and adored and then they move on to the next level.

So many of them become aloof until it’s too late. Peterson is convinced drawing blood from a four-year-old with the branch of a tree is ok now because it was ok 20 years ago when he was growing up in East Texas.

Ray Rice, Greg Hardy and Ray McDonald are probably still convinced that if their significant other is pushing their buttons and they fly off the handle in response, then that’s regrettable but we weren’t there so we couldn’t possibly understand.

A minority of fans at all four teams voiced their support of these players but condemnation in the media seems to be universal. The NFL matters more and more each year. America has no other season like it — so much emotion packed into 16 games. On Monday night, huge Indianapolis Colts defenders fell to the ground, anguished and sweating and winless after two games thanks to a late Philadelphia Eagles fightback.

All that mattered was that game. But these sad giants seemed to embody the greater angst. Most of them are good people and hopefully one day, the game will be all that truly matters again.

* [e-mail] Twitter: JohnWRiordan