I've been listening to a lot of talking heads on the Pacman Jones issue, and it's got me to thinking a lot about the NFL. How do they do it? (By they, I mean league officials and owners.) Pacman Jones, an NFL player, makes a big mess at the NBA All Star game, and somehow, it's the NBA's fault. The talking heads kept talking about the dangers of having all of the NBA "thugs and their posses" in Vegas, and there was no major incident. But Pacman Jones makes a fool of himself, and it reflects on the NBA. Is it a racist bias against the NBA? If so, the NFL has a similar racial makeup. How does it avoid the same racist bias? The NFL has its bad guys, but even they seem like scapegoats. Terrell Owens is almost universally disliked (and possibly rightfully so), but Ray Lewis has accessory to murder charges dropped in a shroud of mystery and wins the Super Bowl MVP. It almost seems like all the media lines up to take shots at TO to deflect attention from the real bad guys. My only theory is this: Many ESPN personalities and other national sports guys are football journalists first. They want the NFL to succeed, so they purposely ignore the really bad guys and concentrate on who they want. (If this belongs in D&D, please move it.)
Seriously, it's the helmets. The NFL tries really hard not to promote individuals and that I think that's why they get more of a free pass on things like this. Any time race is brought up, the majority of people are so quick to dismiss it. But I don't see how it's not an issue here. From the dress code to the huge suspensions for fights, I think it's obvious that the one sport that is predominately African-Americans thinks they have to allay fears by some of the public. I mean why does anyone care if Allen Iverson is wearing baggy jeans when he's sitting on the bench injured? Why can there be a bench clearing brawl in baseball, yet no one's suspended for nearly 20% of the season?
NBA players are more high profile and have a brighter spotlight on them.. their careers are usually longer and they have to be more careful about their image and background. NFL players are just nameless, faceless athletic monsters who are lucky to play more than 3 years, or one contract, in their sports. There's much less for them to lose by acting a fool, really. Just my two cents.
My guess is that the NBA is the most personality and charisma driven of the big three sports. You hear people say that Magic/Bird and Jordan saved the NBA and made it what it is today respectively. It's for the same reason that Tim Duncan doesn't sell tickets that he's overlooked as the public representative of NBA.
So you think that the league's (read: David Stern) treatment of NBA players is racially motivated. I don't disagree. But that doesn't explain the media treatment of those players. Does Stern's overreaction to the Denver "one-punch" fight worsen public perception of the league? Again, the NFL is predominately African American (~70%), similar to the NBA (~80%). Over the past few years, its players and even stars have been in much, much more trouble than NBA players and stars. How does it not get the same scrutiny?
I agree with these statements, but I'm not sure I understand their relevance. Connect the dots for me.
I think you are right about the explanation of the behavior. I think you can add the fact that the average NBA player is older than the average NFL player, so they're more likely to have settled down. (See Allen Iverson) But how does the NFL avoid the perception that all of those faceless (I won't same nameless, because fans know their names) athletic monsters are hip-hop loving, gang-banging thugs. It's definitely closer to truth in the NFL than in the NBA.
I've been thinking about your question a little further, and I think it's because of the qualities of the game itself. There's less differentiation in roles (no molds for offense, defense or special teams), and it be played with just 2 people. I initially assumed that the minority of superstars represented the league, but now with no clear cut alpha star (Jordan) in the league, there's a collection of really good players who can't dominate and win it all alone. When that happens, the public needs the league to tell them who to idolize. There's talk of parity in the NFL, but the NFL is not marketed like the NBA. With less differentiation, the NBA gets hit harder when any player falls into scandal. Stephen Jackson was on one of the Spurs championship teams. He wasn't a great player then, but he became a key player on the Pacers. Then you have headcases like Artest, who makes the stereotypes easier to swallow. So I'm guessing those conditions make public believe that the exceptions make the rule. There's the race controversy for quarterbacks in football that can support my point. Some people assumed white quarterbacks were better at the position than blacks. So perhaps the compartmentalized thinking that goes on in the roles of each sport which effects its image as a whole. I think what reinforces the hiphop and NBA link is that there's a difference in hiphop culture's embrace of basketball moreso than its embrace with football. Mainstream rap used to be how each MC was better than the rest. You want to prove how good you are in any sport, but with any AND1 mixtape or highlight reel, there's individual plays that can stand out and humiliate the opponent regardless of the final score. I guess what I'm saying is that in basketball, the domination of a superstar is more personal as opposed to football where the domination is the result of a collapse by the other team.
