Breitbart Sports Editor Daniel Flynn argued that the problems facing the NFL have been overhyped by the media and created the false perception of an “epidemic” of legal problems for NFL players on Saturday’s “Smerconish” on CNN. 

“With domestic abuse — I think everyone is pretty much outraged over the NFL’s handling of Ray Rice, but the reality is that no one’s hearing is that NFL players have an arrest rate at about 13% of society’s arrest rate according to 538.com. The statistics are pretty consistent with domestic abuse as well, that it’s about half of what the domestic abuse rate is in society, and so it’s not that there is an epidemic of domestic abuse in the NFL. There is an epidemic of coverage of domestic abuse in the NFL. So we get a perception,” he said.

Flynn also pointed out that there have been similar scandals involving NFL players that were not supported by the facts, stating, “If you look back a few years ago it was suicide. There was this lie being pushed in the media that NFL players killed themselves at exaggerated rates, and the reality was, when the federal government looked at it, the National Institutes for Occupational Safety and Health, they found that American men killed themselves at more than double the average of NFL veterans.”

He also reported, “last year, people talked about NFL players dying young, and that same study, that same study by NIOSH, the federal scientists, they found that the NFL players, the men in society actually were dying at almost double the rate as men in the NFL. So, they were outliving their peers, having better health outcomes in things like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, respiratory illness. Basically, that men who are on the field, they’re going to outlive the guys watching them in the stands.” 

Flynn outlined the victim of the exaggerated reporting against the NFL, youth football, declaring “you see all of these scandals with NFL players, but where it’s really impacting is not the bottom line in the NFL. They’re as rich as they are ever going to be. It’s youth football. They lost 6% of their player population last season, about 6 percent the season before, and in some areas of the country there’s not going to be youth football left if this keeps up like this, because there is a constant barrage against the game.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett