Atlanta Falcons

The Art Of Surviving The NFL

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

foxsports

The NFL has a problem.

No, not their failing ratings – did anyone really expect a mediocre Monday night matchup between a defenseless Saints squad and Matty Ice’s cooler-full of flawed Falcons to contend with The Great American Train Wreck (and Presidential Debate)? Even if the game did serve as a commemoration of Steve Gleason’s exhilarating and nation-uplifting post-Katrina punt block, it was an uninspiring bout between a pair of uninspiring teams, neither of whom carry even the faintest whiff of Super Bowl-worthiness. (As an aside, the NFL has always been a little piggish, but Mark Cuban isn’t some clairvoyant for suggesting that a league hellbent on growth, residing in a country desperately clung to the virtues of capitalism, would eventually jump the shark – eventually being the operative word. And let’s be really real – even conceding that the league has lost some viewers to this point of the season – though there are plenty of reasons to think the ratings drop is nothing more than a blip on the tech screen – there’s no data suggesting the NFL’s in any real danger of being overtaken again by baseball, aka The Ghost of America’s Past Time Past, or the upstart MLS, the presumed – by some – Ghost of America’s Past Time Future).

No, the league, the NFL, the Not For Long (it was there all along, Cubes!), is suffering from a problem of culture. More specifically, it’s suffering from a culture of boorishness, of a dearth players root-for-able both on the field and off, of even a hint of a suggestion of a commissioner, Roger Goodell, and ownership group willing to dole out punishment to star players serious enough to fit their obvious and too-often heinous crime. Really, what kind of NFL world do we live in when football inflation levels and smoking weed exist in a similar, if not the same, space on the scale of pigskin punishment as domestic violence?

Even former players no longer on the league’s payroll, players like Greg Hardy and Josh Gordon, continue to cultivate a negative cultural standing for the NFL, while watching the game from afar. In case you weren’t paying attention or managed to block his existence out entirely, Hardy, the trash can in human form, was arrested this past week for possession of cocaine. And while Hardy’s issues, both personal and professional, obviously extend well beyond the lines of the field, they continue to reflect poorly on an NFL and it’s teams – again, no judgement if you didn’t catch this, the man is a bundle of loose toilet paper tied together by impudent rage and inadequacy and not worth even a moment of your attention – who were at least willing to consider re-employing Hardy again this year (or at least to bring him in for an offseason visit, gauge fan reaction, and then pretend like it was only a favor to the player and/or his agent), even after Hardy did his damndest to aid the implosion of Jerruh’s Cowboys last season, following his sickening domestic violence arrest in 2014.

So why is it that a league and a game so widely beloved by a nation desperate for heroes (see: Train Wreck, Great American) seems only to produce, by and large, the worst types of people? And further, why is it that the NFL can’t seem to get out of its own way when it comes to supporting or punishing or promoting its real product – the players on the field?

The answers to those questions aren’t easy to come by.

But if you look closer, look really close, peel back the layers of the stinky, tear-inducing, embattled superstar onion, you’ll find plenty of players worth rooting for, players worth caring about, genuine players unconcerned with national kneel downs that remind you the NFL isn’t just populated by athletes or outsized personalities – it’s populated by people.

People like Carolina Panthers cornerback Robert McClain.

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