Taking a Big Hit - legal problems of football players

Football Digest, August, 2000 by Vito Stellino

The legal woes of Rae Carruth and so many other players have put the NFL in a precarious position

IN MANY WAYS, THESE ARE THE best of times for the NFL. The league, after all, couldn't be more prosperous when it comes to attendance and TV revenue. Yet there is a nagging problem that is threatening its image: The criminal conduct of its players.

Two players--Rae Carruth of the Carolina Panthers and Ray Lewis of the Baltimore Ravens--were charged with murder in the past year, and more than 20 have been charged with other crimes since the start of last season.

The book "Pros and Cons," written in 1998, contends that 21% of the players in the NFL from 1996 to 1998 had been arrested for serious crimes at some point in their lives. Furthermore, a study by APBnews.com indicated that 13 players on last January's two Super Bowl teams --the St. Louis Rams and Tennessee Titans--previously had been arrested.

"I've been a part of this league for 40 years, and I just can't ever remember so many cases of a criminal nature," says Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson.

The NFL admits that at least 29 of its players faced charges in 1999, ranging from sexual assault and domestic violence to disorderly conduct. It says the figure is actually down from the 37 who were arrested in 1997 "We think the programs we have are working," says Harold Henderson, chairman of the league's management council. "The numbers are coming down."

The perception, though, is that the situation is getting worse--and as the old saying goes, perception is reality. The NFL now finds itself being called the National Felons League.

Concern about the rash of incidents is so great that NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue has taken several steps this year to address the situation. In February, two weeks after Lewis was charged when two men were stabbed to death outside an Atlanta nightclub a few hours following the Super Bowl, Tagliabue called his staff together to discuss the issue.

He and Henderson then met in March with NFL Players Association head Gene Upshaw and several current and former players, and the commissioner also held a two-hour session on the subject at the owners' spring meetings in Palm Beach, Fla. Three head coaches--Baltimore's Brian Billick, Tony Dungy of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Mike Holmgren of the Seattle Seahawks--led the panel, along with a top assistant from each team.

Before all of this, the league already had taken steps to combat the problem. It stages various seminars for the players and in 1998 became the first major U.S. sports league to institute a policy allowing for penalties for off-the-field violence. It calls for mandatory psychological evaluation for any player accused of a violent crime, and fines and suspensions for players convicted of or admitting to a violent crime.

Yet it wasn't until Carruth and Lewis faced murder charges that Tagliabue actually took action. He suspended three players for misconduct, including since-retired New York Jets offensive lineman Jumbo Elliott, Matt O'Dwyer of the Cincinnati Bengals, and Denard Walker of Tennessee.

But trouble hit the league again in April when Green Bay Packers tight end Mark Chmura was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a teenage girl. Why was this such a blow? Chmura was considered one of the NFL's good guys. A married father of two, he had done United Way commercials for the league and had refused to go to the White House when the Packers were honored following their 1996 Super Bowl-winning season because he was critical of President Clinton's moral standing.

After Chmura was arrested, four corrections officers in Waukesha, Wis., were given written or verbal reprimands for getting Chmura's autograph while he was in jail, including one on his mug shot. A fifth officer was reprimanded for printing out the mug shot.

That spoke volumes about the depth of this problem, for the NFL and other big-time sports organizations. Even in jail, Chmura was treated like a celebrity. In fact, players receive so much preferential treatment that it's easy for them to believe that the usual rules don't apply to them.

"I think there is probably a natural inclination to do that [give preferential treatment] in whatever position of authority you're in," Dungy says. "Whether you're a coach, the police department, the district attorney, or the president of the United States, you have to make a conscious decision to treat everybody the same."

Compounding the matter is that so many of the players come from troubled backgrounds. For example, the brother of Tennessee defensive star Jevon Kearse couldn't watch the Super Bowl last January because he not only was in prison, but he also was being disciplined for an infraction while in there. Kearse's father was murdered before Jevon was born, and one of Jevon's brothers was shot to death.

Kearse says he is careful when he goes home to Fort Myers, Fla. "When I go home, there are some friends I could get in trouble with if I'm not careful--but I'm careful," he says. "I might just drive by them and say `What's up?' and keep going. I know that's not a place for me now, and they pretty much understand that. I've moved on from that part of my life."