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The hit men
Posted: Wednesday December 09, 1998 10:46 AM
In hindsight, of course, it seems absolutely impossible that 19 NFL teams passed
up the opportunity this year to draft Randy Moss. It was well-known what a
sensational prospect Moss was, and if his criminal past, dating back to high
school -- when he was jailed for assaulting another student -- was also well
known, why would that
matter?
After all, as a new book, Pros and Cons: The Criminals Who Play In The
NFL, reports, better than a fifth of all National Football League players
have been charged with serious crimes -- everything from murder to robbery, from
rape to kidnapping. Assault, especially against women, seems almost commonplace.
In this company, Randy Moss hardly appeared unusual.
So now that Moss has established himself with the Vikings, as possibly the best
wide receiver in all of football, the question looms even larger. Why didn't
Randy Moss get drafted at the
top?
Well, almost surely, it was not a sudden fit of good citizenship which caused
all those teams to decide they wouldn't sully their roster by adding another
player with a rap sheet. Rather, it was just bad timing. Two years before, you
see, the St. Louis Rams had chosen Lawrence Phillips from Nebraska at sixth in
the draft, despite Phillips' well publicized record of violent
crime.
But as a Rams coach observed, "Everybody deserves a second chance --
sometimes a third or fourth chance. Lawrence didn't kill anybody." But
unfortunately, Lawrence simply didn't run the ball very effectively for the
Rams; also, he was nailed for 56 team rules violations and arrested three more
times. Suddenly, compassionate rehabilitation didn't look very attractive to NFL
teams -- especially for Moss, who had long been the centerfold for off-the-field
football
brutality.
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How many teams regret not drafting Moss? Heinz Kluetmeier |
Ironically, though, unlike Phillips and a lot of other fourth-chance stalwarts,
Moss has been a model of propriety with the Vikings. Notwithstanding, his new
success only recalls his notorious past, which, in turn highlights that
revelatory new book about NFL player violence -- which has been written by two
respected sports investigators, Jeff Benedict and Don Yaeger -- and which again
begs the question: should the NFL (and other pro leagues) suspend, or even bar,
players for private behavior, as it does for vocational misconduct? What
difference, really, does it make if you assault the quarterback or your
girlfriend?
The leagues, however, always maintain that even though professional athletes are
public figures -- even, after a fashion, heroes to children -- nothing they do
in their private life should deny them the right to make a living on the field.
The matter is complicated by race. Since so many players are African-American,
observers are skittish to approach the issue. As Benedict and Yaeger document,
the NFL has an unfortunate habit of defending its policy by implying that it
just might publicly accuse critics -- like Bernard Sanders, the Vermont
congressman -- of
racism.
But neither scare tactics on the one hand nor sensitivity on the other should
obscure the fact, that football players simply seem disposed to violence, and
altogether too many of them can't distinguish who to hit, inside or outside the
sideline stripes. Randy Moss' magnificent season doesn't cancel out the
continuing epidemic of football-player savagery. Too many people keep getting
hurt. So does the
sport.
These commentaries, which appear each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition, are posted weekly by CNN/SI.
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