The underlying flaw in NFL player discipline
The NFL has said it holds players to a higher standard of personal conduct than avoiding criminal prosecution. The league, however, is fundamentally ill-equipped to do this.
Deshaun Watson hasn’t been charged for any of the sexual improprieties he’s said to have committed. Two different grand juries in Texas declined to indict him.
That certainly doesn’t mean he’s innocent.
This week, it was announced he has reached a financial settlement resolving 20 of the 24 civil suits from women who said the star quarterback had done things that ranged from lewd and coercive behavior to sexual assault.
That doesn’t mean he’s guilty.
Now, the NFL has to determine an appropriate punishment for Watson, and for the past 8 years the league has been telling people it is capable of doing just that in situations like this. And for those past 8 years, the NFL has repeatedly demonstrated that even if that’s what it truly wants — which is debatable — it is not properly set-up to do so.
There are many reasons for this. Some of them are structural. The NFL is not better equipped to investigate crimes than the police. It is not more capable of determining guilt or innocence than a criminal court. Its system for weighing those matters is neither clearer nor more transparent.
What the NFL does have is a public-relations plan. One it has been reciting ever since the two-game suspension of Ray Rice resulted in an intense public shaming of the league after video was published that showed Rice knocking his then-fiancee unconscious.
That was the impetus for Roger Goodell to become the tough-on-crime commissioner. He talked about a higher standard of behavior among players and team employees. He emphasized the need for responsibility. He repeatedly stated how important these matters are especially when it concerns the abuse of women, and in multiple instances Goodell suspended players for incidents that did not result in criminal convictions.
The NFL’s plan succeeded in one regard more than any other: None of its decisions the past 8 years have produced the level of universal hostility that Rice’s two-game suspension did.
But the NFL’s policies over these past 8 years have created an expectation that the league will be able to pull some semblance of justice out of a situation like Watson’s. The reality, however, is that it is utterly unequipped to do so. It can mouth the words; it can’t do the work.