National Football League

Sunday was great for NFL, but we can't lose sight of what's really important

Published Sep. 22, 2014 1:21 a.m. ET

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This was what the NFL needed, what us fans had looked forward to, what Roger Goodell -- when he left his disastrous Friday afternoon press conference -- surely hoped for: An NFL Sunday full of football so compelling it might blunt the constant noise of controversy and disappointments the league has lately been serving up.

Did you feel the narrative give way, for a day, to actual football? We had a rematch of last year's Super Bowl, a thriller in Seattle in which Peyton Manning led a last-minute comeback, tied the game with an equally gutsy two-point conversion but had to watch in overtime as Seattle drove for the winning touchdown. We had Nick Foles and the Eagles coming from behind for the win, again, this time against Washington and its bright new star, Kirk Cousins. We had Johnny Manziel with his first big moment, even if a flag took it back, and two other young, maybe-they're-the-future quarterbacks make their debuts.

We had Arizona and Cincinnati, as well as Philly, jumping to 3-0, we had comebacks and heroes and winners and turnovers and drives and all the drama -- good drama -- that's made the NFL so relevant in the first place.

We had football, finally.

And it was great.

And you know what? Now it's time, today, to get back to our rage. It's time to cast aside that false hope -- the idea it's just time to move on that so many apologists and others worried more about the Shield than what it's been hiding have been advocating -- and hold onto our perspective. It's that perspective, matched with the way the world's hyper-speed social media has given everyone a tangible voice, that has turned our billion-dollar sports leagues into vehicles for some real-life meaning.

The fact football has taken on a heavy air isn't a knock against our pastimes. It's not something we need to move past with the utmost urgency and speed. It is not something we should rush at all.

What we've learned, as the world has started to be filtered through the Internet and all that it's created, is that the games that have had so much power over our lives and culture can also -- when we're focused enough, and angry enough -- come under our power, too.

Lately, there has been an ideal, often hollow and insulting, sold to us that sports reflect the best parts of ourselves. Through steroids and rape accusations and lost perspective and fans beating one another senseless and all the other awful things that have become part of our sports cycles, it has been a hard thing to still believe in.

But not with Penn State, when the world caught wind of what Jerry Sandusky had done, when social media turned the Internet's mob mentality into something good, and when the idea that you could hide your evil in something as great as our sports games gave way to this reality: We'll bury you, as a country, if we find out.

That wasn't sports at its worst. That was one awful man versus a sports world that leveraged change. It happened again with Donald Sterling. And it's happened again, now, with Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson and Greg Hardy and -- if Outside The Lines' excellent journalism is accurate -- a culture of cover-ups too common among our powerful institutions.

The bad guys here are the bad guys. But those of us who feel rage, who put sports in perspective, and who together -- because of our anger and voices and persistence and indignation -- force change are not hurting our sports teams or leagues. We're saving them. We're reestablishing, somewhat, the idea that built our sports so big in the first place: That they really can reflect the best parts of our culture, and of ourselves.

The Vikings changing course on Peterson's time with the team, Goodell's sprinter's race toward the right side of crimes against women and children, the awareness these things bring, Sterling's dismissal from the NBA and the spreading fact that racism -- in fact or in words -- will not be tolerated ... every one of these is a win for those of us who love sports and believe they can have a deeper, better place in our lives.

Sunday was fun. But starting today, let's stay angry enough that it can be meaningful, too.

Bill Reiter is a national columnist for FOXSports.com, a national radio host at Fox Sports Radio and regularly appears on FOX Sports 1. You can follow him on Twitter or email him at foxsportsreiter@gmail.com.