After watching less and less of the NFL the past few seasons, I finally decided to pull the plug completely this season. It was a combination of issues which made me decide I'd had enough including:
- Concussions: The scenes with Mike Webster and Junior Seau in the League of Denial documentary really got to me. What I took away from the film was you could see what a massive financial juggernaut the NFL is and despite this how far they were willing to go to put player safety at risk over even the slightest risk that bad publicity surrounding concussions would impact their bottom line. Since the documentary aired it seems little has changed, the NFL continues to do the bare minimum necessary to combat the issue.
- Performance Enhancing Drugs: Watching the NFL today reminds me of watching cycling during the worst of the doping years during the 1990s and early 2000s. You see the same kind of super human athleticism that was seen in cycling back then. I suspect the NFL has the same institutionalized PED issues that cycling had, especially when you consider the NFL's testing and penalty system which continues to be light years behind cycling and has no chance of being an effective deterrent. The NFL clearly has no intention of doing anything about this situation. In particular last year you had the Al Jazeera report which contained multiple leads that could have been followed up on, and two investigative pieces about Tom Brady and the Patriots (I'm a Boston fan btw) relationship with Alex Guerrero which reminds me strongly of the relationship Lance Armstrong and the Postal Service team had with Dr. Ferarri. Both reports were quickly swept under the rug.
- Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault: It has been difficult to watch the number of cases of domestic violence and sexual assault involving NFL players while the league stands by and largely does nothing. Players like Ben Rothlisberger with multiple sexual assault accusations against him and the despicable Greg Hardy get off with a slap on the wrist and go right back to their multi-million dollar contracts. The Greg Hardy case was the last straw for me even after the pathetic suspension reduction how quickly the Cowboys were willing to sign him.
- Richie Incognito and the Dolphins: I read the whole report concerning the situation with Richie Incognito and the Dolphins. This report provided a window into the type of behavior I suspect is typical in NFL locker rooms. While it probably isn't fair to tar the entire league based on this one report, I was disgusted by the behavior of many of the players and suspect this kind of atmosphere is prevalent in many NFL locker rooms.
My tuning out the NFL is not going to do much to address any of the above issues, but it still felt like the right thing to do.
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