When it comes to Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson and its crisis of domestic violence, the NFL can't get it right because getting it right isn't the NFL's priority.
Trying to fool the world with 10 cents on the discipline dollar is the NFL's priority, and the world isn't fooled. The world sees what the NFL is doing, and the world is ticked off.
This is how bad the NFL and Minnesota Vikings have screwed up this crisis of domestic violence: The conversation has shifted away from Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson, and toward the NFL. Instead of talking about society's cycle of domestic violence, we're talking about the NFL's cycle of appeasement:
Hear the news. React softly. Listen to the world erupt in shock and anger. React more strongly.
That's the NFL way, and along the way the NFL and Vikings have issued stern statements and appointed a task force here and there, but fans and sponsors and even the governor and one senator from Minnesota are fed up. We're tired of empty words and flaccid punishments. What most of us want, as a society, is for the NFL to get it right on something as despicable as domestic violence. And get it right the first time.
This is how wrong the Vikings got it with Adrian Peterson, who was indicted on charges of beating his 4-year-old son with a stick -- beating him so hard that he left the boy's leg striped with bloody marks, and hitting him so many times that Peterson told police he lost count:
Even as Adrian Peterson was preparing to play for the Vikings this week, Nike was pulling its Adrian Peterson gear from stores in Minnesota.
When Nike is ahead of you in terms of compassion and awareness, in putting the right thing ahead of the profitable thing, you've fallen too far behind to catch up with a single sprint. But that's what the Vikings, and the NFL, have done this whole way: Played catch-up on an issue that isn't all that hard to get right the first time.
Ray Rice knocks out his fiancee in an elevator? Ray Rice can't play in the NFL for a long, long time. That discipline was a no-brainer to everyone but NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who settled on a two-game suspension after first seeking the opinion of the battered spouse. Society erupted in unison, and Goodell tried to appease the mob with an email to owners about making future instances of domestic violence being punishable by up to six games, the "up to" part going unnoticed in most places.
The Ravens, meanwhile, buried their head in the sand and saw no evil here. They applauded Rice in stories and pictures on the team's official website, and coach John Harbaugh welcomed him back, calling Rice "a heck of a guy."
Only when video of the actual punch surfaced did the Ravens do the right thing and release Rice, doing it so late that the rest of us were more irritated than impressed. What, you had to actually see Rice punch his fiancee to be revolted by it?
Now this, with the Vikings. Peterson didn't just beat his son with a stick he pulled from a tree. First, he told police, he removed the leaves from the branch. What did he do with the leaves? Well, the 4-year-old told police that Daddy shoved those leaves into his mouth. Then pulled down his pants and beat him.
Leaves in the mouth? That's not discipline. That's torture.
That news broke Friday and the Vikings went for appeasement while the NFL did nothing, the team refusing to let Peterson play two days later at New England. After a blowout loss, and after a report surfaced that Peterson had been investigated before for abusing another of his children -- the incident reportedly leaving a scar on that 4-year-old's head -- the Vikings reinstated Peterson. Because, Vikings owners Zygi Wilf and Mark Wilf said in a statement on Monday, "We should allow the legal system to proceed."
And so the hamster wheel turned some more, the cycle of appeasement moving to its next phase: societal outrage. Adrian Peterson has been linked to two different incidents of abuse in the last year, and the Vikings are just now discovering it, and they're going to let him play one week later? Turns out, no. Less than 36 hours after saying Peterson could return, the Vikings changed their mind early Wednesday morning and said: No, he cannot. Not until this legal issue is resolved.
It's true, the legal system must be respected, and Peterson will have his day in court. But society must be respected, too, and society is appalled when some of the strongest men among us -- if you saw Ray Rice or Adrian Peterson in the locker room, shirts off, muscles everywhere, you'd be stunned -- are using that superhuman strength on women and children.
But the NFL hasn't been appalled. The Vikings weren't appalled. The 49ers, who are letting defensive end Ray McDonald play despite being arrested (and still investigated) on suspicion of felony domestic violence against his pregnant fiancee, weren't appalled. The Cardinals, who signed Chris Rainey the day after the Ray Rice elevator video surfaced, weren't appalled to add a player who had been kicked off a college and a pro team for different acts of domestic violence.
The Panthers, who have let defensive end Greg Hardy play after being convicted in a bench trial of terrifying acts of violence and intimidation against his girlfriend, weren't appalled -- though they hopped on the hamster wheel and went for appeasement by sitting Hardy in Week 2, after letting him play in Week 1. What changed between Week 1 and Week 2? The Ray Rice video surfaced. The Panthers went for appeasement. But they're hopping back on the hamster wheel, because Greg Hardy for now is available to play this weekend.
When does this cycle of appeasement end? When the cycle of domestic violence ends, apparently.
Never.
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