In my junior year of high school, my best friend gave me an Eli Manning poster for Christmas. It hung in my room in my childhood home, in my college dorms and my college apartment, and in my first Brooklyn apartment, post-graduation.
I was a diehard football fan. I proudly wore my Giants sweatshirt or my Manning jersey on game days. During my first year of college I used to stake my claim over the remote control in the student lounge on Sundays because I didn't have a TV in my dorm room. I wore my Super Bowl Champions T-shirt endlessly that year, until it became ratty and faded. It's still tucked in my drawer, under my work-out clothes.
I loved football. But as I continue with my streak of shedding things that are not good for me or for society (sugar and meat were the first to go), football is the next thing I leave behind.
A recent editorial in the New York Daily News exposing the sham of Peyton Manning's good reputation was, unfortunately, overshadowed by news of Antonin Scalia's death. The piece summarizes the alarming story of how Peyton Manning allegedly sexually assaulted athletic trainer Jamie Naughright when he was at the University of Tennessee, lied about it, got away with it and then smeared Naughright's reputation in a book that he and his father wrote several years later. Jamie Naughright has been forced to leave two jobs because of the assaults on her body, and her character. The book, The Mannings, continues to be sold, and Peyton Manning continues to be idolized as a shining football star, and a man of good character.
Sexual violence and intimate partner violence (IPV) are like weeds that keep sprouting up from the garden of professional and college football. Executives, coaches, players themselves, and even police keep trying to stomp out the weeds, but they keep growing back. How long until we realize that the soil itself is tainted?
Ray Rice's two-game suspension for knocking his then-fiancé unconscious and dragging her out of an elevator sparked the first serious conversation about the NFL's problem with domestic violence. Though the NFL did create a new, better policy to punish players who commit acts of intimate partner violence in response to the incident, and though Ray Rice may never play pro football again, there were 12 other NFL players with domestic violence arrests who were still playing as of September 2014, and Roger Goodell remains the commissioner of the NFL, even after the Associated Press reported that a law enforcement official said he sent the footage of Rice hitting his then-fiancé to the NFL before TMZ released it to the public.
Has anything really changed since the Ray Rice incident?
The NFL has made big donations to a national hotline for victims of intimate partner violence, and has been running PSAs about IPV during their games, but these changes do absolutely nothing to address the messages that the institution of American football sends to men about violence, namely: "You can get away with it."
News has recently surfaced about a football player at the University of Tennessee (the same school where Peyton Manning played) who was physically assaulted by his teammates, while the coaches watched, as retribution for helping a young woman who said she was raped by two of his teammates and supporting her decision to file charges. The player himself did not press charges for assault, and transferred to another university.
Since the NFL announced its new domestic violence policy in August of 2014, a handful of NFL players have been arrested for domestic violence. One of them, Ray McDonald, was arrested twice, and was still signed by the Bears even after his first arrest and release by the 49ers. Four of them are still playing.
And we cannot forget that Jameis Winston, who was accused of rape when he was at FSU and was seemingly let off the hook by a police department that did not even try to investigate the case, is now the quarterback for the Buccaneers, and some are predicting that he will rise to stardom as quickly as Cam Newton did.
I can no longer make excuses for the institution of American football, as it promotes a culture that prioritizes protecting powerful and talented men's reputations over protecting women's safety. The news I read about the allegations involving Peyton Manning at first shocked me, but my shock was quickly replaced with resignation. I believed the ruse about Peyton Manning's character, but I am not surprised that it was a ruse. I have seen too many headlines about how women have suffered -- their bodies and their reputations are the steps that the champion treads over, as he ascends to the stage to collect his trophy, and receive accolades from his thousands of fans.
Two months ago, when I moved into the apartment I currently live in, for the first time, I did not hang my Eli Manning poster on my wall. I didn't hang it simply because I didn't feel enthusiasm for the team anymore. I hadn't watched a game in a long time because I can't afford cable, and I've been busy with other priorities.
Now, I think that poster might sit rolled up in the corner for the rest of its life, if it doesn't make its way down to the dumpster. As a society, our problems of sexual violence and intimate partner violence extend far outside the world of football, but I can no longer support an institution which has such a poor track record on these issues, and, from where I am sitting, shows no signs of improving. We have just thrown praise, admiration, media accolades and a whole lot of confetti over a criminal. And nobody seems to have any qualms about it.
I won't be tuning in to Sunday Night Football anymore, because I can't support that any longer.