Achilles in Sayreville

October 23, 2014

Sports are all about numbers, and the numbers in the “game” being played out in Sayreville, N.J. are particularly brutal.

Seven: That’s the number of students who’ve been suspended from Sayreville War Memorial High School and charged with hazing and sexual assault. Four: That’s the number of teammate-victims and the number of incidents. Five: That's the number of coaches with tenured teaching positions who’ve been suspended (with pay pending the outcome of the investigation) and have seen their coaching stipends cut in half.

Numbers, however, never tell a whole story, and they can’t tell this one – of a season lost, of football scholarships rescinded, of futures in jeopardy and of a football-proud town divided between the victims and their supporters, who are seeking justice and truth, and the alleged perpetrators and theirs, who wish the whole thing would just go away so they can get back to lives lived under the Friday night lights.

It’s interesting that the school is named after a World War II memorial and the team is called the Bombers.

“Every game resembles war,” Mark Edmundson writes in his sharply observed new “Why Football Matters: My Education in the Game” (The Penguin Press, $26.95). “Tennis, soccer lacrosse: You might say they all domesticate violence…. Of the games I know, football comes closest to war without falling over the border and becoming war pure and simple.”

There are those – including many who connect the dots between Sayreville and the NFL’s domestic abuse crisis – who say that football has crossed the line. The wives and children who’ve been beaten, along with freshman boys who were held down, kicked, punched and anally raped, are casualties of the gridiron wars. ...

Close, but no Cigar: The humanity of four-legged creatures (and the inhumanity of two-legged ones)

October 17, 2014

Am I the only one who is seriously disturbed by the rumblings that came out of the recent meetings between NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and his 32 bosses, uh, owners of the league’s teams?

Apparently, the league is considering the assignment of disciplinary actions to an outside committee, even though Goodell says his primary responsibility is to safeguard the integrity of the game. So wouldn’t the safeguarding of the game’s integrity require taking responsibility for disciplining miscreants? (An aside: This is a misuse of the word “integrity.” Goodell really means the game’s honesty. All integrity means is wholeness. The league could be wholly good or wholly bad. Either way it would still have integrity.)

English lessons aside, the real problem here is the absence of leadership. NBA commissioner Adam Silver had no trouble getting rid of former Los Angeles Clippers’ owner Donald Sterling after his racist remarks. So why should Goodell have trouble executing the new personal conduct policy the league is going to come up with? ...

Colin Kaepernick, seen here in 2012, is locked in a struggle with the NFL over wearing Beats headphones.

The Beats go on for football – America’s religion, America’s travesty

October 14, 2014

From the Friday night lights of small towns across the U.S. to the NFL, football has never been more popular – or more besieged.

Sayreville, N.J. is just the latest community to be rocked and torn apart by allegations of sexual assault, this as part of a hazing ritual among the players on the Sayreville War Memorial High School team. With seven players under arrest, the season has been canceled.

“It’s a town that lives on Friday night lights. It was something for everyone to enjoy,” town Councilman David McGill told The New York Times. “We don’t want to see that big-league sports mentality start to trickle down to us….”

Under fire, the NFL thinks pink

October 6, 2014

A shout-out to two former colleagues covering the NFL’s domestic abuse crisis.

Jane McManus of ESPN continues her fine reporting with a piece on the NFL’s addition of more women to the team that will ultimately help clean up this mess. A revelation: Off the Field, the NFL wives organization, is just being included in the discussion now. (Apparently, a first letter from the wives to the league was lost. What a surprise.)

If you’ve been reading this blog, then you know that Jane and I worked together at The Journal News, a Gannett publication. One of our estimable colleagues was longtime religion reporter Gary Stern, who contributed a piece on the entwined lives of NFL commish Roger Goodell and suspended player Ray Rice in the paper’s Oct. 5 edition. ...

Is soccer playing the gender card?

September 22, 2014

The NFL domestic abuse narrative took a twist Saturday as that other “football” game – soccer – got into the act.

Or didn’t. Hope Solo – goalie for the U.S. national women’s team – extended her shutout record to 73 even as she’s facing charges of punching her sister and 17-year-old nephew at a late-night, alcohol-fueled party, leaving them with head and face injuries. (Ironically, she was involved in an incident in which her husband, former football player Jerramy Stevens, allegedly assaulted her. A judge dismissed the case on the grounds of insufficient evidence.)

This as Roger Goodell...

The NFL takes a “paws” for a cause

September 21, 2014

Football took a holiday from its troubles Sept. 18 as members of the New York Giants’ most recent Super Bowl-winning teams hit the runway at Bloomingdale’s White Plains to support New York Pet Rescue.

Former wide receiver Amani Toomer, former punter Jeff Feagles and former guard Chris Snee walked some four-legged models – or rather the “models” walked them, perhaps giving credence to W.C. Field’s line that you should never work with kids or dogs.

Or maybe you should. At one point, Andy – one of the two-legged models – paused (or should that be pawsed?) to let a woman in the audience pet the dog he was carrying. Then he kissed the hand that had caressed the animal. Lovely.

The event underscored that it takes all kinds to make this world. Football players generally are not as lithe of physique as models. Nor do they slip easily into ready-to-wear or hold a pose the way models do. They’re built for and are used to moving.

But the Giants trio had good fun, with Amani Toomer even imitating the classic model’s slouch for the delighted audience. ...

On the field, without a playbook

September 19, 2014

It’s getting harder and harder to tell the proverbial players without a scorecard in the NFL as the rules keep changing daily, the scandal widens and the hits (to those off the field) keep coming.

First Adrian Peterson (running back, Minnesota Vikings, felony child abuse charge) was deactivated, then reactivated and now he’s on something called Commissioner Roger Goodell’s permission/exempt list, which sounds like a good thing but is a good/bad thing, because he can’t play (altogether now, awwww!) yet still gets paid, which, as we know, is the most important thing.

Joining Peterson in the lucrative timeout corner is Greg Hardy (Carolina Panthers, defensive end, appealing a conviction of domestic abuse). Will Jonathan Dwyer (Arizona Cardinals, running back, charged with aggravated assault involving his wife and toddler) be far behind? For now he’s been deactivated, but, as we’ve seen, anything can happen. ...