Padecky: NFL is too big to fail (w/video)

Tell me I’m wrong, that’s what I asked Keith Dorney earlier this week.

Tell me, Keith, I am full of bean burritos after I say this. …

It’s September 2015. Ray Rice, Ray McDonald, Adrian Peterson and Greg Hardy weren’t allowed to play in the NFL after the second game of the 2014 season. They were fined millions. They spoke to school children and battered women, took enlightenment classes, went into deep therapy. They apologized so much they lost their voice. They cried real tears.

So now it’s September 2015, the beginning of another NFL season. It’s as if none of those 2014 headlines and that Ray Rice video ever existed. The outrage has passed. The huff and puff are gone. All is forgiven and forgotten. It’s back to business as usual for the NFL. The four players return to the field, idolized, back on television selling Subway sandwiches, breath mints and vacuum cleaners.

“Tell me I’m wrong, Keith,” I asked.

“That’s what the NFL is hoping,” said Dorney, a West County resident, a Penn State alum and member of the College Football Hall of Fame who was an offensive lineman for the Detroit Lions for nine years back in the ’80s.

Like those Wall Street banks of a few years ago - and I squirm as I write this - the NFL is Too Big to Fail. An industry that made $6 billion in 2013 has a lot of lawyers, public relations staff and imaginative marketers who can throw out those cutesy 30-second spots on Why I Love The NFL, like that little girl getting ready for the game by putting on eye-black.

“And it’s not just those disturbing behaviors,” said Dorney, now a financial analyst. “The NFL has the concussion issues, how they are taking care of the older, retired players, the leading with the helmet, the lawsuit settlement. There are a lot of things going on.”

Oh, let’s not forget Washington owner Daniel Snyder refusing to admit his team’s nickname is offensive. Dallas owner Jerry Jones is getting sued for millions, accused of sexual harassment. The Minnesota Vikings were flopping back and forth on whether to play Peterson, their season clearly in peril if he doesn’t play.

“The arrogance they (NFL) are showing is very disturbing,” said Dorney, 56, referring to protecting the players and, most important, The Brand. “The NFL is falling in line with corporate America. It’s all about greed.”

What’s most troubling: Any sensitivity the NFL is showing does not come from a genuine sense of compassion, that it is wrong to hit a woman, that it is wrong to lacerate a 4-year-old child with a tree branch. Whatever acknowledgments the league is making, they are being pushed by public opinion, not by a sense of decency. So take with a grain of salt the NFL’s sincerity.

Forget about the NFL protecting women and children. Rather, the NFL is more concerned with protecting the bottom line. Last year the NFL made $6 billion in revenues. Commissioner Roger Goodell said the NFL can do better. He would push for a $25 billion payday by 2025. His owners swooned. No one thought him foolish to make such a statement. To think the NFL would rock that money boat with a surge of compassion and awareness, well, go to the dictionary and read the definition of naivety.

“The NFL is at its height of popularity,” said Dorney, well aware that of the four most-watched television events in U.S. history, three have been recent Super Bowls. They are even insulated against one-sided, non-competitive games, typically the death hammer to ratings. Seattle’s 43-8 rout of Denver in the most recent Super Bowl was the most-watched event in this country’s history: 111.5 million people tuned in.

Which leaves us to answer the $25 Billion Dollar Question.

What will it take for the NFL to be really serious and punitive about domestic violence, child abuse and all-around criminal punk behavior?

When the money slows to a trickle. When the league can’t afford to pay its CEO (Goodell) $44 million a year.

“There will need to be a general upswell of disgust from the American people,” Dorney said.

Just as the Washington Post followed the money trail to unmask Richard Nixon 40 years ago, so will the NFL money trail determine whether the league will be proactive or passive. The first pothole has been discovered.

The Radisson hotel chain has suspended temporarily its monetary sponsorship of the Minnesota Vikings, waiting for the final adjudication of the Peterson case. Will the Radisson move be an isolated incident or a harbinger? If NFL fans are willing to slam down their fist and scream ENOUGH, the impact is just beginning. That would mean taking a step back from hero worship and seeing pro football players as human beings, not figments of their fantasy.

“In today’s climate,” Dorney said of a reality check, “it’s not going to happen.”

The game is too popular. The outlet for fans too compelling. The sport runs through the American consciousness like a hot wire.

“It would take something more heinous than what has already occurred,” Dorney said.

Dorney wouldn’t offer an example. Nor would I. Neither of us wanted to go there. The thought, frankly, is repugnant. And there’s been enough of repugnant already.

The NFL has enough good, decent players that it can be a beacon for enlightenment.

It can show the way and use its very public platform to educate America on how to treat women and children. It can lead.

The only question is: Will it? And will we believe them?

By September 2015 we’ll know.