When people on Twitter ask my opinion about sensitive situations like the Ezekiel Elliott suspension and the NFL Domestic Violence Policy, I think sometimes it is better to write a blog post to share complex thoughts.
I started writing about NFL discipline issues in 2006 after incoming NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell made player behavior and punishment a greater focus of his position. (You can find much of my NFL discipline writing in the NFL tag).
Fans would get angry at some of the decisions and wonder about issues of fairness and timing and bias. I generally have not been supportive of Goodell’s approach to discipline, as criminal justice issues are often complex and sensitive, and his typical stance is neither.
A note before reading this: Domestic violence is a raw, emotional topic. I do not like glib debates about such things as sports social media sometimes does with difficult issues that turn into tribal, team-focused thing. For what it is worth, I am not a Cowboys fan, I want nothing good to ever happen for the Cowboys ever, and if you like them, good for you. Life is better when you have things and people you love.
That should be irrelevant to the discussion, but as fan-oriented topics go, I have come to learn that some readers care about such things.
The NFL Domestic Violence Policy is relatively new and has been handled differently at different times. No matter what the NFL decides, various people will not like it because we all have our own life experiences that inform our views.
Given my background, here are my initial thoughts:
What is the Purpose of NFL Discipline?
In the modern world, laws and rules tend to be reactive to the emotion and anger of a particular event and not based on an evidence-based, fully-thought through philosophy. In the criminal justice world, this has lead to a wild expansion of acts that are now crimes on the state and federal level. Without knowing what you want to accomplish by a policy, whether it is in government or a sports league, it can lead to horrible, unintended consequences.
Most people without knowing details of the NFL Domestic Violence policy would go: “Domestic violence is bad, punitive policies by the NFL to fight it are good.” That is a natural human inclination but is the “I have a hammer, everything is a nail approach.”
If you are interested in exploring this general idea further, I would suggest reading these previous pieces of mine:
“What is sensible discipline for NFL player conduct?” via my blog, September 16, 2014
More specifically the logistics: “League Discipline and Legal Reality” via SI.com, September 19, 2014
“Presumption of Innocence or Everyone Knows They’re Guilty” via my blog, September 28, 2011
What are These Unintended Consequences?
There can be many purposes for discipline policies. Public relations. Vengeance. Anger. Deterrence. Education. Rehabilitation. I don’t think the policy as written does any of this well. Even an anger-based policy doesn’t deal with people who do not want to root for someone accused of domestic violence because what does six game suspensions do for that?
What I’m certain it does poorly is protect abused people. To me, if you have a policy that deters reporting and makes things worse for people experiencing domestic violence, then your policy is just well-intended, PR pandering.
Why?
Domestic violence is hard for the legal system to deal with for many reasons, which makes it nearly impossible for sports leagues to be any good at it. Roger Goodell may look like a stereotypical lawyer, but in fact, he is not one.
Though there are general statistics about domestic violence, at a micro level, each circumstance is different. For police officers, domestic violence calls are some of their most dangerous calls.
The police do not know anything about the people involved, their history, any substance abuse, weapons, who is abusing whom, whether the abused person will cooperate or become hostile to the officers due to the emotions involved, many things. They are forced to sort things out quickly. Often the information given is hazy, emotions are volatile, and independent witnesses limited.
Can Deter Reporting.
In the context of sports leagues, the fame, money, fan interest make muddle these complex domestic violence issues further.
I strongly recommend this Washington Post article: “For battered NFL wives, a message from the cops and the league, keep quiet.”
In key part: “If the league is serious about ending domestic violence in its ranks, it must rehabilitate instead of punish, they say. Penalties should be less draconian, so wives don’t worry about ending their husbands’ careers or threatening their families’ livelihoods. ‘They use [the NFL’s current policies] as leverage against you,’ says the ex-wife of the Saints player. ‘There’s abuse on every team. Everybody knows, but you know not to tell.’ Ultimately, she says, the case against Ray Rice has made the NFL less safe for women:
‘You will hear of a wife murdered before you hear another one come forward.’
I would also suggest reading Diana Moskovitz with her more specific Deadspin’s article, “Zero Tolerance for Domestic Violence Will Only Make it Worse.”
Very Privacy Invasive.
Making allegations against public figures is difficult in the context of sports. And no policy should deter reporting. The trend in criminal justice system is to take domestic violence reports more seriously and handle the cases more sensitively.
There is an inherent tension between listening to the wishes of the abused and making sure they have agency in the outcomes versus prosecuting cases even when they do not want to press charges or cooperate. Those issues are tough to work through in a situation by situation basis, and there is a lot of variations in jurisdictions with who does it better or worse.
With discipline issues, punishing players when the law sees them as an innocent person, can drive fanbases to their worst inclinations and extremes. They search for details of the abuse and turn it into an embrace debate topic.
If there is video or pictures of the incident leaked, it is worse because though some media outlets handle such things sensitively, in my experience, most do not.
News is reported. Video and pictures are more interesting and get reported more. If details are news, details get reported. A suspension and litigation and uncertain timing of suspensions make this bigger news.
People who have been abused typically do not want their abuse re-lived daily as a hostile sports debate topic.
The NFL doing their investigations can be extremely intrusive. Why should they cooperate with their abuser’s employer? Why should they share pictures of their worst moments that could be leaked and often are? Sometimes those who have experienced domestic violence want to remain private and create their own outcome that works in their lives if they are able.
How does this encourage the reporting of abuse or help the abused?
The NFL Policy Invites Embrace Debate: Using the Ezekiel Elliott Situation as an Example.
Ezekiel Elliott was accused of domestic violence. He has denied that it happened. In America, accused people who are not convicted of crimes are innocent.
Roger Goodell says that NFL players are held to a higher standard than that, but his standard isn’t by definition a standard. It is whatever Goodell says it is that day.
Because there are no real rules or process to what the NFL does, it invites debate of details. Those questions are justified given the shoddy investigations that have happened in the past. And the timing of when suspensions happen. Sports leagues are typically better at education and prevention than being fair adjudicators.
What are the specific immediate issues with the Ezekiel Elliott situation?
“Confidential” Letter Announcing Suspension. When the six game suspension was announced, a “CONFIDENTIAL” letter was shared on Twitter from NFL Network reporter, Ian Rapoport among others with details of the findings. It was later removed from the NFL hosting site, but the not confidential letter is still hosted elsewhere. [pdf}
Sharing those details from NFL hosted accounts is strange. Going through the details of what they found, invites fans and reporters to make the details an object for public debate.
From a league transparency perspective, I can understand why the NFL would like for people to know why they made the decision they did. From the perspective of encouraging people to report abuse, it is not helpful.
Timing. I’m not sure why the information as discussed in the letter took that long for a multi-billion dollar organization to investigate and decide. It is hard not to be suspicious of the timing of the suspension given the performance of the Cowboys in 2016. Legal processes often go slow, but others like it haven’t been this slow.
Limited Facts. Even without knowing all the details, you can tell that this has been written for purposes of future litigation. It provides a lot of details of the case in support of the suspension and few facts that would be in his defense. With limited documents that have been released in previous cases, this is typically how the NFL findings go.
From a process perspective, it can’t feel like anything other than a railroading job with the slanted way the letter is written and then released to the world.
Prosecution Focused. As a general rule, prosecutors tend to see everything from a prosecution focus. When the policy was first enacted, I thought the policy was written from more of a PR, prosecution punitive perspective with very little protections given to making sure they weren’t suspending people wrongfully.
The letter says that the Commissioner was counseled by independent advisors who reviewed the same evidence he did. To give him cover that this is somehow a fair process. Two of the four advisors listed are ex-prosecutors, who tend to see such issues as prosecutors do.
Process protections are important. If processes seem unfair, it can undermine the cause that is meant to be championed.
You can look at general statistics to try to make supportive policies for abused people but on an individual basis, false accusations happen. The suspension letter had a lot of words in it, but at its basic form, it was a who do you believe. Sometimes those assessments are wrong, and we know so because they are proven that way at a later date. Sometimes you never know.
Even when you are working on a case with confidential information, you rarely see the God’s eye truth as it happened but more how various people saw things.
Invites Player Response. This is now going to be litigated in the media because the NFL has invited the facts to be debated by using suspension as their main disciplinary tool. Elliott’s representatives have denied the NFL’s letter and have presented their own facts disputing what happened.
Treatment Requirement. Elliott has denied the actions happened. Though many people, both young and old, could benefit from counseling, requiring therapist approved by the league is a strange dynamic for someone denying an accusation.
Reducing Suspension. Sometimes Goodell reduces punishment based on the contrition of the player and his work to improve but that is impossible when the player denies something happened. It is always harder to prove a negative.
How Does This Help Anyone? Ultimately, nobody is going to be happy with this outcome. Fans will debate whether the punishment should be more or less or gone. Usually, that debate will go along the lines of 31 fanbases against one fanbase. Making things into a suspension, with often uncertain timing of when it takes place, transforms it into a debate topic, a betting topic, a fantasy football topic, which means that the debate will be mostly dumb and gross.
The next to the last paragraph of the “confidential” letter is a lie. It read in part:
“While this is a serious matter, it by no means suggests a belief that you cannot have a long and productive career in the NFL. You will have substantial resources available to you from your club, and from our office, to assist you in learning how to make better decisions and avoid problematic situations. Our goal is for you to have a successful career as possible.”
What resources? Is it their goal? He’s denied the allegations. The NFL is taking away money and job and adjudicating guilt with a made up standard so he can succeed more? With the way that the NFL typically handles suspensions, it appears more that they are interested in PR, and making the NFLPA have to fight them on discipline issues in the future.
Personally, I think all fans should care about this even if they do not care about the Cowboys and wish bad things to happen to them.
Despite all the words in the letter, the true standard wasn’t anything different than the head of WWE deciding a particular storyline or matchup. If there is no mechanism to prove one’s innocence in a particular process and few real safeguards, this could happen to any team and any player. And we should all agree that the NFL, as an institution, should not have suspension policies that make it more difficult for abused people and deter future reporting.
Next Steps. Typically, it becomes litigation. That’s what happens when the policy dictates suspensions, and large sums of money and precedent are at stake, none of which helps the person who reported the abuse.
Usually, the litigation arguments are technical and not whether it happened or not. Which keeps it in the news longer.
Have any additional questions, comments on this? Please put them below.
Please note: I moderate this blog myself, and I do not want any abusive comments about anyone or any commenter. Plenty of places on the web for abuse, but I don’t want a blog with my name on it to be a place for that. I moderate and answer questions when I have a little time. Thanks for making this place cool.
Related links:
“Roger Goodell’s Criminal Justice Role Was Doomed to Fail.” Originally published on July 1, 2009, reprinted here, September 13, 2014. (To be fair, it is a success if you enjoy lots of bad publicity and alienating fans).
“Is Roger Goodell an ‘Unthinking Moralist.” Originally published on April 1, 2008, reprinted here, September 9, 2015.