NFL Bountygate, Performance Enhancers and Violence: Do We Really Care?

Let’s all admit it, once and for all: The NFL is the patron sport of hypocrisy.

We love the big hits and demand more. Put ‘em in a highlight reel and count ‘em down, from the violent to the bone-crushing to the holy-crap-how-is-he-still-alive?

As long as they’re legal, of course.

And make the players bigger, stronger, faster. I can’t wait to see them in pads; let’s have them audition for us all to watch because I want to see 270-pound linemen run a 4.6 second 40 and 200-pound wide receivers push 22 reps in the bench press. Because, my god, did you see that guy? He’s a gladiator. Steroids? Oh, gosh, no, I’m sure most players don’t partake. These guys just train really, really, really hard.

Baseball, now that sport had an issue. It was basically instituted. I mean, they all knew, y’know? Did you see how big Barry Bonds’ head got? Or Mark McGwire’s? Those guys obviously beefed up with steroids.

But Ray Lewis? No, uh-uh, absolutely not. I mean, not anymore, if he did. Steroids might have been a problem at one time, but now the rules are strict.

Anyone see the problem, here?

It’s well documented that the NFL had (and has) widespread cocaine use, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. And why not? NFL players have a definitive economic incentive to use performance-enhancing drugs, particularly the variety that leaves blood within a week. A drug allowing a player to forget excruciating pain and run around the field with reckless aggression? Sign him up for a line.

I’m sure a slew of moral pejoratives will find their way to the comments thread of this column because we all love to preach about what’s right and wrong. We like to the define the black and white in the grey, draw a line in the sand and wag a disapproving finger at those who fail to live up to our lofty “role model” standards.

Then we turn our enraged and reddened faces to the television to watch freaks of athleticism slam into one another at unthinkable speeds, complaining after a 15-yard penalty that the league is babying its quarterbacks with preferential treatment.

Welcome to the life of an NFL fan. We trade moral judgments for more entertainment. We willfully turn a blind eye to the possibility of performance-enhancing drugs, trusting the league and individual franchises to handle issues internally and report to us any findings when they become available, secretly keeping one hand behind our backs, crossing our fingers that everyone who plays for the home team tests negative.

Then, one day, someone wondered what the coaches were saying in locker rooms to get players so fired up. He sneaked in a tape recorder and caught a coach trying to ignite his players with talk of making the opponent “fear” them. The coach told them to target the ACL and go for head.

“We’re gonna dominate the line of scrimmage, and we’re gonna kill the (expletive) head. Every single one of you, before you get off the pile, affect the head. Early, affect the head. Continue, touch and hit the head.”

Cue shock, horror and a healthy dose of indignant outrage.

Too far! This is where we draw the line, when there is verifiable evidence of players purposely attempting to hurt one another!

And if it’s only implicit … well, that’s just football.

“Whatever, a broken finger, his thumb, something. That's what we had to do,” former Buccaneers starter Chidi Ahanotu admitted in a recent interview. “I'm trying to hurt guys.”

Guess what? It works. More to the point, it’s inevitable. You can’t have aggressive defenses without players trying to maim their opponents. You don’t get to cherry pick the hits without accepting the correlating injuries. And regardless of helmet technology or precautionary steps, that’s going to include concussions, the injury sweeping headlines and dominating the conversation.

The league’s latest response: scapegoat kickoffs. Two man wedge, maximum. And move up kickoffs to the 35-yard line. Actually, scratch all that: Let’s just get rid of kickoffs. That will end the horror.

Monday afternoon, ESPN’s Merril Hoge steamed, “You’re doing a disservice to this game if you take any element from it… The only way you’re going to keep people completely healthy is to not let them play. And that’s not going to happen.”

The NFL will position more trainers on the sidelines and hook them up with video technology, hoping to catch concussed players walking dazedly to the sideline; rules will protect the quarterbacks, much to the annoyance of NFL fans; and we’ll all act indignant that Greg Williams said all those awful things.

But we know how violent football is. We brag about it and discuss it. Do we really believe players need additional monetary incentive to try to hurt guys wearing another jersey? Yes, what Greg Williams did was wrong. But at the end of the day, is a league of “incidental” casualties morally superior to one with “bounty” victims?

Of course it is. But then again, I’m a hypocrite.