Ray Lewis Mike Halverson/Getty Images

Domestic abuse. Drug possession. Paternity suits. No, we're not talking about a week in the life of the Portland Trail Blazers. The subject is Playmakers, the ESPN series about a fictional pro football team that has just about anyone whose living depends on the NFL in a major tizzy. NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue told CNN the show was a "gross mischaracterization of our sport," which is a bouquet compared to what Players Association executive director Gene Upshaw thinks of the series. Upshaw would probably rather sit through a 24-hour Love Boat marathon than watch another second of Playmakers, which he has implied is racist in the way it casts NFL players in an unfairly negative light.

The league and the union are putting pressure on ESPN to make the first season of Playmakers, which recently concluded, its last. Gatorade has already pulled its advertising from the show. All the heat is likely to cause ESPN to cave in, even though the series pulls in about four times as many viewers as the programming that it replaced. Even if the series somehow survives, it will probably become a de-clawed version in which the only locker room fights will be over who gets to play Santa for the kids at the orphanage.

If ESPN wants to cancel Playmakers because it's an overheated soap opera that makes Dynasty look subtle, there will be no objection from this corner. No one is suggesting that the show is high art. But it would be a shame if the network crumbles under the weight of the misguided pressure from forces who aren't willing to acknowledge the obvious: the show is rooted in reality, whether they like it or not.

Consider some of the plot lines. One of the star players gives a false report to police after a murder outside a nightclub. Ray Lewis, anyone?

A running back gets in legal trouble for allegedly assaulting his wife. Tampa Bay running back Michael Pittman is living that one in real life.

A player gets pulled over by the cops while driving with drugs in his car. Funny, the same thing happened to William Green of the Cleveland Browns two weeks ago.

Steroid-using players start to sweat when it appears they might get caught. The four Oakland Raiders who reportedly tested positive for THG, Bill Romanowski, Barret Robbins, Dana Stubblefield and Chris Cooper, can probably relate to that one.

It's odd how people like Tagliabue and Upshaw aren't nearly as vocal about how real-life misdeeds damage the image of the league and its players as they are about the make-believe ones on a television show. If ESPN executives have any backbone, they'll tell the NFL and the union that instead of whining about the supposedly far-fetched plots, they should be grateful that the show hasn't yet shown a tight end in a hot tub with high school girls (remember Mark Chmura?). Or a wide receiver using a traffic control officer as a hood ornament (Randy Moss). Or a player arranging for the murder of his pregnant girlfriend (Rae Carruth).

Granted, the life of any individual NFL player is probably not nearly as dramatic as any character on the series, but most doctors don't have many days as exciting as those depicted on an episode of ER, either. Playmakers is entertainment, and as such, it gets to take dramatic license. But the stretch isn't as far as the league would like you to believe.

Instead of criticizing the series, league officials and players should be studying it, because the series didn't arise purely out of some screenwriter's imagination. The image that much of the public has of life in the NFL -- or the NBA and Major League Baseball, for that matter -- bears a strong resemblance to the one depicted on Playmakers. Tagliabue and Upshaw should worry less about fiction and more about the reality from which it comes. Television shows like Playmakers don't create public perception, they reflect it.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor writes about a Hot Button topic every Monday on SI.com.