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Old 09-22-2014, 09:13 PM
 
Location: Currently living in Reddit
5,652 posts, read 6,964,445 times
Reputation: 7323

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason_show View Post
LOL. They're all millionaires. Is that an good sample for comparison against the general population?
Well, they're not all millionaires, but certainly make a ton more than the average Joe.

However, they are all (*ahem*) college graduates so that would be a more fair comparison.
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Old 09-22-2014, 09:32 PM
 
Location: Tucson for awhile longer
8,869 posts, read 16,280,653 times
Reputation: 29230
Quote:
Originally Posted by Listener2307 View Post
That's dumb. You are trying to compare 1700 men who are recognized and admired, who enjoy excellent physical health and who have no financial problems with everyone else? Given those facts, there should be NO domestic violence among NFL players.
Sorry, but it doesn't work like that. Yes, once NFL players get long-term contracts with teams, they accrue sudden wealth, provided they play and are not immediately injured. Some of them even took their college courses, although many of the best players fail to graduate. A recent study conducted by the National College Players Association found that 86% percent of America's students on athletic scholarships (of all sports) come from below-poverty backgrounds. These families also are disproportionately led by single mothers and many are not strangers to violence and dysfunction that comes along with living in low-income neighborhoods. NFL players, furthermore, are 67% African-American and we also know that AAs are disproportionately represented among the poor.

From earliest childhood, many kids see sports as a way out of poverty. If they had talent, their communities paid them more attention than other children normally receive. Those good at football were mentored from childhood to give this sport their all. They are taught to hit and hit hard in each and every game and to take hits. Unfortunately, many are also taught by their society that they are special and the ordinary rules don't apply to them.

Just because someone earns sudden wealth, it doesn't mean good sense comes along with it. A Sports Illustrated investigation found that two years after retirement, 78 percent of NFL players find themselves under financial stress and many of them eventually declare bankruptcy. This includes such supposed paragons of virtue as the great quarterback Johnny Unitas, who followed his legendary football career with a job as a broadcaster for CBS. He didn't waste money on all the things one might imagine broke former sports heroes spend it on. He was led into bad investments, including a circuit board manufacturing company that went belly up.

And as for your contention that football players "enjoy excellent physical health," that might be true in their youth but it's not true by the time their careers in the NFL are in gear. In addition to the recently publicized fact of head injuries, most players suffer from a lifetime of painful and debilitating injuries. A study of 500 retired NFL players by the Washington Post found that:
- Nearly 6 in 10 reported three or more concussions and 2 in 3 who had concussions were aware they have continuing symptoms from them.
- More than half reported 3 or more major injuries, such as broken bones, ligaments and cartilage requiring surgical repair, back injuries, and degenerative arthritis.
- 44% said that they have had or are planning joint replacements.

None of this is intended to provide excuses for people to engage in physical violence of any kind, let alone domestic abuse. NFL players should be subject to the same punishments as anyone else in society and their fame should be no reason to coddle them. But while NFL players might indeed be "recognized and admired," your contention that they are enjoy great wealth and wonderful physical health is not supported by their reality.

Many are men who have very little experience with resolving anger with anything but brute force. And even more have no ability or training to address the sudden wealth and fame that they may have no wherewithal to handle. That's what the NFL needs to be addressing if they expect to cut down on domestic violence.
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Old 09-23-2014, 07:36 AM
 
Location: NE Mississippi
25,440 posts, read 17,121,995 times
Reputation: 37128
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jukesgrrl View Post
Sorry, but it doesn't work like that. Yes, once NFL players get long-term contracts with teams, they accrue sudden wealth, provided they play and are not immediately injured. Some of them even took their college courses, although many of the best players fail to graduate. A recent study conducted by the National College Players Association found that 86% percent of America's students on athletic scholarships (of all sports) come from below-poverty backgrounds. These families also are disproportionately led by single mothers and many are not strangers to violence and dysfunction that comes along with living in low-income neighborhoods. NFL players, furthermore, are 67% African-American and we also know that AAs are disproportionately represented among the poor.

From earliest childhood, many kids see sports as a way out of poverty. If they had talent, their communities paid them more attention than other children normally receive. Those good at football were mentored from childhood to give this sport their all. They are taught to hit and hit hard in each and every game and to take hits. Unfortunately, many are also taught by their society that they are special and the ordinary rules don't apply to them.

Just because someone earns sudden wealth, it doesn't mean good sense comes along with it. A Sports Illustrated investigation found that two years after retirement, 78 percent of NFL players find themselves under financial stress and many of them eventually declare bankruptcy. This includes such supposed paragons of virtue as the great quarterback Johnny Unitas, who followed his legendary football career with a job as a broadcaster for CBS. He didn't waste money on all the things one might imagine broke former sports heroes spend it on. He was led into bad investments, including a circuit board manufacturing company that went belly up.

And as for your contention that football players "enjoy excellent physical health," that might be true in their youth but it's not true by the time their careers in the NFL are in gear. In addition to the recently publicized fact of head injuries, most players suffer from a lifetime of painful and debilitating injuries. A study of 500 retired NFL players by the Washington Post found that:
- Nearly 6 in 10 reported three or more concussions and 2 in 3 who had concussions were aware they have continuing symptoms from them.
- More than half reported 3 or more major injuries, such as broken bones, ligaments and cartilage requiring surgical repair, back injuries, and degenerative arthritis.
- 44% said that they have had or are planning joint replacements.

None of this is intended to provide excuses for people to engage in physical violence of any kind, let alone domestic abuse. NFL players should be subject to the same punishments as anyone else in society and their fame should be no reason to coddle them. But while NFL players might indeed be "recognized and admired," your contention that they are enjoy great wealth and wonderful physical health is not supported by their reality.

Many are men who have very little experience with resolving anger with anything but brute force. And even more have no ability or training to address the sudden wealth and fame that they may have no wherewithal to handle. That's what the NFL needs to be addressing if they expect to cut down on domestic violence.
The minimum wage for NFL players is 420,000 as of this year. That should allay any financial concerns - and does for most of us mortals.

You make some fine points, not the least of which is the reality that professional football is played largely by angry young men who were raised as SPUDs (Single Parent, UnDisciplined) in disadvantaged households. Attempting to factoring anger and violence out of these men will be fruitless, I think. We can get the NFL to fire them, but their anger will resurface someplace else. Like it did with OJ.
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Old 09-23-2014, 09:24 AM
 
Location: Seoul
11,556 posts, read 9,293,864 times
Reputation: 4655
The NFL is also made up of people who have a much higher income than the general population

Let's try to compare the rate of Domestic Violence of NFL players to the rest of the people earning 400K+
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Old 09-23-2014, 09:28 AM
 
Location: Upstate NY 🇺🇸
36,754 posts, read 14,768,593 times
Reputation: 35584
Who cares about the rate as compared to the general population?

One doesn't have to be a sports fan (and I'm not) to notice how today's players (football, basketball, and baseball) are very different from yesterday's. That's the issue.
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Old 09-23-2014, 11:00 AM
 
Location: Buckeye, AZ
38,936 posts, read 23,816,095 times
Reputation: 14125
Quote:
Originally Posted by Delahanty View Post
Who cares about the rate as compared to the general population?

One doesn't have to be a sports fan (and I'm not) to notice how today's players (football, basketball, and baseball) are very different from yesterday's. That's the issue.
Or perhaps the media wasn't as privy to what happened with the athletes, actors, musicians and other celebrities as they are now. I mean there was talks that say a person like Kayne West was not personable in say the 1980's (which would create an urban legend) but now we easily have proof of that with camera phones so it is a fact rather rumor. If Ray Rice or Adrian Peterson did what they did when Len Bias died of his cocaine OD, the media would have talked about it for a week tops. If Len Bias' death happened today, we'd talk about it for as long as we have Rice. This is mainly because of the 24-hour news cycle and how interconnected we are today.
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Old 10-09-2014, 02:47 PM
 
Location: Type 0.73 Kardashev
11,110 posts, read 9,768,459 times
Reputation: 40161
Sorry to burst your propaganda bubble, but the comparison - a pool of people who all make a minimum of six figures and an average of seven figures where the first figure is higher than '1', to the all men of similar age - is absurd. Oh, wait - maybe you don't want that factored in? Why not? I bet you have no problem factoring in gender (because if you didn't exclude women, the rate in the NFL would most certainly be higher than the general poopulation, even before considering income), do you? Domestic violence arrests (the metric your article cites) are highest amongst low-income groups, you know. You do know that the poverty rate among NFL players is 0%, right?

Here in the real world, millionaires in the NFL most certainly do have a higher rate of domestic violence than millionaires of the same age-range in general.

And my source for this information? The exact same source referenced in the article you linked. In fact, the very same author.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/more-on-the-rate-of-domestic-violence-arrests-among-nfl-players/
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Old 10-10-2014, 02:08 PM
 
3,244 posts, read 5,229,032 times
Reputation: 2551
The other shoe drops:
Former NFL exec: Teams hid 'hundreds' of abuse incidents
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