The Modern Moral Dilemmas of the NFL and Fans
June 29, 2022
By Paul Francis
Did you hear about the 74-year old NFL owner, already married twice, who proposed to a 31-year old woman carrying his child? The marriage proposal included a prenuptial agreement and was conditional on getting an abortion. She agreed initially, but after deciding to keep the baby, he divorced her a few months later, and they ended up in a messy court battle. That did not stop him from moving onto to Wife #4, who’d been briefly jailed for cocaine trafficking. After she got busted for driving drunk down a crowded street with a man (not the owner) clutching to the hood of the car for dear life, they got divorced…but then got remarried a couple years later.
That owner was our very own Jack Kent Cooke. All that happened from the late 80’s to the early 90’s. The Washington Redskins were the toast of the NFL, winning championships and becoming a dynasty. It’s value as one of the most prized franchises in pro sports was skyrocketing. If you did know about the high jinks of JKC’s personal life, you had to be paying close attention in those days, because it was hardly covered by the media despite the red-hot spotlight on Washington.
A generation later, I sometimes wonder what JKC and the Washington Redskins of the Gibbs Era would have been like in today’s scandal-seeking TMZ-style media culture. Those Redskins were a colorful bunch of characters. You had guys like “Saint” Joe Gibbs and Darrell Green leading the locker room in prayer and Bible study, alongside John Riggins and the 5 o’clock Club, and the notorious escapades of Dexter Manley.
Today, sports is almost as much about what happens with the figures off the field, as what happens on it. And there’s a stew of interesting (nauseating?) issues that are forcing sports fans into some interesting moral dilemmas. Which players and teams can we feel good about supporting based on our morality? This was hardly a question a generation ago when the moral conduct of players and owners was barely scrutinized. Sports was about whether your team gave you a reason to cheer or boo based on what was happening between the lines, not outside of them. In fact, sports was often viewed as a welcome escape from the moral dilemmas of life. There was something pure, simple and clean about rules-based meritocratic competition. But now we are in different territory altogether.
I won’t repeat all the allegations and issues that Deshaun Watson faces, but few figures in NFL history have seen their reputational star fall as quickly and dramatically as him. Whatever happened between Watson and the dozens of masseuses he employed behind closed doors will only be known by them. Watson has not been charged with a crime, nor has he done anything to violate the integrity of the game (eg. PED use). Does anyone doubt that if Watson had been around in the days of Jack Kent Cooke, no one would even notice or care about this issue? But Watson has effectively been out of football for a year, and as he begins his NFL disciplinary hearing, he’s supposedly facing another 1-year ban from football. One of the alleged defenses that Watson will bring up is the lack of disciplinary proceedings against a similarly situated individual – Bob Kraft…
Since the turn of the millennium, the New England Patriots were the crown jewel of the league for almost 20 years. The NFL consisted of the Pats…and everyone else trying to beat them. The meteoric rise of the Patriots happened under the ownership and stewardship of Bob Kraft, who also became one of the most influential power-brokers in the NFL. And yet, the closet behind that ginormous Lombardi case in Gillette Stadium has a pile of dirty laundry too. Spygate, Deflategate, Aaron Hernandez – these are all issues that both affected the integrity of the game, and/or involved criminal activity of the highest (lowest?) degree. What kind of operation was Bob Kraft really running there?
Then there is the case of Bob Kraft himself. In 2019, he was caught in a sex-trafficking police investigation leaving a massage parlor that was offering more than just massages. Video cameras planted by the cops had evidence of what happened inside. However, due to the deep pockets of Bob Kraft lawyers and technical-legal missteps on the part of investigating authorities, the state’s case against Kraft and the other men caught up in the sting unraveled. Kraft successfully petitioned the court to have all video evidence destroyed as well. While none of the male clients initially charged faced legal repercussions of any kind, some of the women and workers involved were guilty of prostitution-related charges and faced punishment.
The same sets of questions being used to scale Watson’s moral compass should apply to Kraft as well. Why is a man worth $8 billion visiting a day spa located in a strip mall next to Taco Bell and a gas station? Why did Kraft move heaven and earth to get the video evidence legally destroyed if nothing illegal or morally questionable happened inside? Why has Kraft escaped disciplinary scrutiny of any kind, when the owner/workers of the spa were guilty of prostitution-related charges?
One could argue that “consent” is a factor, and that Watson’s accusers are alleging coercion that did not bear out in Kraft’s case. But let’s be real. How truly empowered are low wage immigrants trapped in a strip mall flesh-market to make accusations of coercion against a guy like Bob Kraft? I’d be interested to know if Bob Kraft or the NFL would like to engage in a full public discussion about the nature of “consent” as it pertains to sex-work among low wage immigrants. Certainly, the circumstances of Kraft’s case should invite heightened scrutiny, but it hasn’t. Speaking of heightened scrutiny…
Is there an owner who has been in the crucible of heightened scrutiny more than our very own Dan Snyder? He has been facing scrutiny from Congress, state attorney generals, NFL-led investigations, team-led investigations, minority owners, ex-employees, corporate sponsors, fans and media. Mostly all of it has been invited and self-inflicted, and where there is that much smoke there is usually fire. But – bear with me on this – but, for all the scrutiny of Dan Snyder, the man has never been charged with any crime like Kraft or faced a lawsuit of the nature of Watson. (Snyder has been involved in various business-related lawsuits over the years). Now, we are recently learning of a settlement and other accusations of a personal nature that may emerge, but without substantiation these remain in the vague realm of allegations.
In the moral calculus of fans, are the sins of Dan Snyder greater than those of Watson or Kraft? Who deserves more scrutiny, and for what? Let me throw another thought out there in the mix: Bob Kraft has faced zero scrutiny for involvement in criminal prostitution in the same league where Jack Del Rio was fined $100,000 by a team for a controversial political tweet – does that morally balance out for you? As well, there can be no doubt that the on-field success of Bob Kraft’s Patriots has helped shield him from the same scale of moral condemnation that other owners like Snyder have faced. And what does it say when “winning” can skew the moral scale by which we measure? And if the moral standard of the entire league is in such a discombobulated place, does that matter to you as a fan? At what point does tuning into the NFL at all say something about your own morality?
On the one hand, we care. It should matter to us if a person we root for has sexually assaulted another human being. It should matter that a team we support has enabled a culture of criminal activity within its ranks. But the longer we keep pulling on that thread, we also start to remember the age-old truth. “Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone.” Because the longer we stare in the pool of the NFL’s moral dilemmas, we start to see our own reflection breaking on the surface too. And fans can be funny and fickle beings. It’s interesting how our moral exceptions can shift and evolve based on other loyalties and factors like politics, religion and race.
So where do you stand in all of this? Are you a “Just win, baby!” kind of fan (speaking of colorful and controversial NFL owners)? Or do you have a moral threshold that says “enough” before you uncouple from a player, team or even football altogether, and where would it be?
I’d enjoy reading your feedback in the comments section – and I’m sure it will be colorful, controversial and filled with moral dilemmas, as usual.