The sports world has been shaken by the most recent NFL Scandals involving abuse charges by two of the league’s top running backs.
Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice was cut by his team and suspended by the league indefinitely for striking his fiance in an elevator and knocking her out. Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson was suspended on a child abuse case, where he allegedly hit one of his kids with a tree branch. Peterson being one of the best running backs football has ever seen and is now setting a stereotype for NFL players as thugs or crooks, which is not what the NFL wants.
The NFL seems to have players in some sort of legal trouble more than any other of the main sports associations like the NBA, MLB, and NHL. Players committing murder, failing drug tests, and getting in bar fights have become a regular thing in the NFL and adding abuse to that list makes the league look much worse.
The Ray Rice case makes the league look like they have been covering up scandals for several years, the NFL apparently had the video of Rice knocking his wife out for several months before they released it to the media when it should have been released right when the video was acquired. It seems like they just wait for the worst possible crimes to take place to actually take action. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is regarded as easily the worst commissioner in the four major sports associations and the allegations the players in the league always face definitely do not help. For example the ongoing Aaron Hernandez murder case. I’m not saying the NFL is a terrible organization, I’m just saying they let some pretty low class citizens into their league, people that they know will commit crimes and fail numerous drug tests, but their good athletic abilities make it so teams decide to take chances on them.
The NFL appears to be trying to make improvements by cracking down on their drug policy, but that’s really all they are doing. People are definitely keeping their eye on the NFL to see if any further improvements are going to be made.