The sports media has a unique, and never before heard of theory about why the NFL handled the domestic violence case involving white New York Giants kicker Josh Brown differently than the way they handled the domestic violence cases of black players like Ray Rice and Greg Hardy.
This heretofore unheard of theory? The NFL is racist.
Okay, maybe you’ve heard that before. As Trent Baker reported earlier today, Both ESPN and FS1 have gone all in on the race angle.
“I don’t know Josh Brown from a can of paint,” Smith said on ESPN. “Nobody’s excusing Ray Rice. We damn sure ain’t excusing Greg Hardy. These are two individuals who committed egregious acts and needed to pay for them. Ray Rice has shown a lot of contrition, compared to Greg Hardy, which is why a lot of us promote the idea of him getting a second chance. But, the acts were committed, they deserved to be punished, everybody acknowledges that with the brothers. But, this white dude, Josh Brown, is a kicker on the New York Giants who literally has taken a journal highlighting his transgressions, his egregious acts and it is not until a couple days ago when the King County Office in Washington releases this information that suddenly here we are again?”
Sharpe remarked of Brown on FS1, “Ray Rice, Josh Brown. Even when the NFL said they didn’t have the information, they suspended [Rice] for two games. You have no information on Josh Brown, you suspend him one. Tell me why. Remember, 64 percent of the NFL players are black. The black guy gets two games, the white guy gets one game.”
Makes sense, right? Two black players and a white player all commit the same type of crime. Yet, the white player’s punishment, at least initially, happens in a far different fashion. To our extremely shallow and race-baiting media, this constitutes case closed.
Though, are these cases really the same?
The NFL hit Ray Rice with basically the same kid gloves they hit Josh Brown with, at least at first, when they handed him a two-game suspension. Only one more game than they gave Josh Brown.
When did that change? When did they decide to order the Code Red and nuke his career? The league went to that length only after the video of Rice punching his then fiancée hit the internet.
The same with Greg Hardy. Soon after Hardy’s arrest, pictures of the bruised woman he slung onto a bed of machine guns went public. Forever solidifying the accurate portrayal of “Hardy the Maniac” in the public mind.
On the contrary, who’s seen video of Josh Brown beating his wife? Who has seen the video of him abusing her in front of her kids, like Brown admitted he did in his written confession? When did the video of him treating her like the “slave” go viral? These things haven’t happened.
We have become a society of images. People don’t get snapped out of their daily routines and whipped into a mob-like, sharknado of passion until they see a video or an image that stops them in their tracks.
Does that make it right? Does that make it okay that the NFL feels strong action only becomes required when a wife-beating gets a few million shares on Facebook? Does that make it okay, that it took weeks of media pressure to force the NFL to put Brown on the Commissioner’s exempt list like they did early Friday?
Hell, no. It makes them colossal idiots with zero self-awareness, who play pay lip-service to the notion of protecting women from predatory players.
But it is what it is.
Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter @themightygwinn
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