Are you ready for some controversy?
These are the secrets the NFL tried to hide.
Certain moments in the NFL stay with fans for generations, but the game has unfortunate
lasting effects too, especially when it comes to the health of its players.
One study showed that former football players in the NFL die at a faster rate than their
counterparts in professional baseball.
Even worse, players in earlier generations often lacked programs to assist with their
well-being.
Former NFL running back Eric Dickerson explained to The New York Times,
"When we came up in the league, we had no health care.”
One common health issue is chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E.
Boston University found C.T.E. in the brains of 99 percent of NFL players who participated
in a study.
The lead author on the study explained,
"The data suggest that there is very likely a relationship between exposure to football
and risk of developing the disease.”
The university also discovered that due to the high physical impact of football, the
risk of developing C.T.E.
doubled after only a little over 2 and a half years of playing the sport.
Of the many players found with C.T.E., several committed suicide, including Aaron Hernandez,
who was convicted for murder in 2015.
After his death in 2017, examiners found the C.T.E. in the 27-year-old was, according to
The New York Times, "the most severe case they had ever seen in someone of Aaron's age.”
In 2020, 15 women who were former employees of The Washington Commanders spoke out to
The Washington Post and claimed they were sexually harassed during their time at the
club.
While 2020 may have been the first that some fans heard of this, these and other allegations
had been brought up years earlier, as well.
While fans were cheering on the team, these women said they dealt with, quote, "frequent
sexual harassment and verbal abuse."
According to the allegations, the incidents took place between 2006 and 2019, mostly under
team owner Daniel Snyder, and many of the top executives ignored any complaints.
Snyder denied many of the claims and hired a law firm to internally investigate the situation.
After people questioned the legitimacy of Snyder choosing the law firm, the NFL took
over the investigation.
Meanwhile, lawyers representing the women in the investigation challenged the NFL to
publicly commit to taking action to remove Snyder as the majority owner.
As the New York Times reported, Roger Goodell, the NFL's commissioner, "fined the franchise
a record $10 million and ordered Snyder to stay away from the team's facilities for several
months.”
But Goodell never released the results of the investigation to the public, despite calls
to do so.
As commentator Mike Florio put it,
“This is all about concealing the evidence, concealing the facts, hiding the information,
that if we knew it, there would be a groundswell, full boil.”
According to The Washington Post, Snyder allegedly tried to intervene when the NFL took over
the investigation, even sending private investigators to intimidate people involved in the case.
As of 2022, Snyder is still the owner of the Washington Commanders.
Ray Rice, a former running back for the Baltimore Ravens, became the subject of one of the biggest
scandals in NFL history.
In 2014, a video showed Rice dragging his fiancée Janay, who appeared unconscious,
out of an elevator in Atlantic City.
Rice was accused of assault, and as a result, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell suspended the
player for two games.
Goodell said of the seemingly light punishment,
"He's been accountable for his actions.
He recognizes he made a horrible mistake, that it is unacceptable, by his standards
and by our standards.”
Advocacy groups and others were outraged by Goodell's actions and claimed domestic violence
was a bigger problem in the NFL than it seemed.
One of the groups, Credo, said in a statement that the league was, quote, "perpetuating
a culture that tolerates violence against women."
Soon after, TMZ released a horrifying video from inside the elevator which showed Rice
punching his fiancee out cold.
The Ravens cut Rice from the team, and it was the end of his football career.
Afterwards, Ray and Janay Rice remained together, and later spoke on CBS This Morning about
how they moved on and grew from the incident.
"I know it's hard for people to understand."
"It is."
"And I'm not here to force people to understand.
There was never a thought whether I was gonna leave or not, because I knew that that wasn't
him in that moment."
For those who think that becoming a professional football player in the NFL is the golden ticket
to lifelong wealth, the reality is far different.
In fact, many players go from living the life of luxury to practically nothing.
It's almost hard to believe that, according to a 2009 story from Sports Illustrated, only
two years after retiring from the game, quote, "78% of former NFL players have gone bankrupt
or are under financial stress because of joblessness or divorce.”
There are multiple reasons that players can go from counting bills to counting nothing.
The biggest includes players buying into risky private investment deals, instead of investing
their capital into something more safe and stable.
"It's not sexy to invest in a mutual fund.
It really isn't.
It's not exciting."
This is only exacerbated by the fact that NFL stars often have no experience in budgeting
and finance.
Plus, some say that the league doesn't provide enough education to help its players avoid
financial ruin.
To avoid financial stress after retirement, players need to take it upon themselves to
set budgets –- like Ryan Broyles of the Detroit Lions, who lived off a $60,000-a-year
budget for him and his wife.
Many fans grew up watching their favorite NFL teams from a young age, with stories and
jerseys passed down through generations.
Some cities, including Buffalo, New York, have had an NFL team in town since the 1920s.
"The Bills are part of the western New York fabric.
They're part of our DNA."
Sadly, other cities saw their teams rise to greatness before leaving town.
The Rams franchise first started out in Cleveland in 1937, and after finally winning the NFL
championship, its owner moved the team to Los Angeles for the 1946 season.
The team stayed in California for decades before relocating back to the Midwest in 1995,
this time in St. Louis.
After an awful 1998 season which saw the team go 4-12, the Rams returned with a vengeance.
The team went 13-3 in the next season and won the Super Bowl in 2000.
It was the first and last championship for the St. Louis Rams.
For the 2016 season, the franchise returned to Los Angeles.
While fans on the West Coast were happy for a new team, behind the scenes it was a legal
mess.
The St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority brought a lawsuit against
the NFL over the move, alleging that the league failed to follow its own relocation policy,
cost the city millions of dollars in potential revenue, and misled St. Louis into financing
a new stadium for a team they didn't know would soon be leaving.
Owning an NFL team is a dream for some, and for those who already own one, it can be a
lucrative investment.
"I consider it a great privilege, and I have enjoyed every single one of them so much."
As of 2021, David Tepper, who owns the Carolina Panthers, is the richest owner with an estimated
net worth of $14.5 billion.
He’s far from the only billionaire in the league, either.
Several of these team owners have been downright shady, too.
For example, Tepper purchased the Panthers from franchise founder Jerry Richardson, whom
the NFL investigated for sexual and racial workplace misconduct.
According to sources, four ex-employees with the Panthers were paid large settlements as
a result of Richardson's alleged behavior.
The NFL fined Richardson $2.75 million in 2018 but avoided providing details of the
allegations.
Richardson collected $2.2 billion from selling his team.
The following year, Patriots owner Robert Kraft was arrested in a prostitution sting.
In January of 2019, Kraft was getting a massage in a Florida spa where, as The New York Times
reported, “Kraft and other men were filmed allegedly paying for sex."
Ultimately, the video evidence was dismissed and charges against Kraft were dropped.
It can be shocking to learn how much money some NFL players make.
For example, in 2020, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes signed the biggest NFL contract
in the organization's history for 10 years and $450 million.
But these figures are nothing compared to what the league makes for itself.
Even with hardly any fans in attendance in 2020 because of COVID-19 restrictions, revenues
were in the $12 billion range, according to Sports Business Journal.
This was a 25% drop from the previous year, which brought in $16 billion.
If the 2020 season had gone as planned, revenues could have been around the $16.5 billion that
was projected.
Most of the losses were from local revenues, which the teams earned individually.
The league revenues, which are split evenly among all the teams, were $9.5 billion in
2019 and didn't decrease as much because the league still earned all of its media payments.
In fact, half of the money that the NFL makes comes from TV sponsorships.
Even more surprising was the extra money the league was making thanks to a long-standing
exemption.
Starting in 1942, the NFL was tax-exempt.
It was only in 2015 that the league, amid growing criticism, finally gave up the status.
Sounding more like a political scandal than an NFL controversy, "Spygate" rocked the league
in 2007.
A video assistant for the New England Patriots was caught filming the New York Jets' defensive
signals.
The NFL fined the Patriots' head coach Bill Belichick $500,000 and another $250,000 to
the team.
Bill Belichick, the coach for the Patriots, said,
"I respect the integrity of the game and always have and always will."
According to the coach,
"...the practice was immediately stopped, and we're not doing it."
Even though the Patriots also lost a first-round draft pick the following season, people still
felt the NFL needed to do more.
Specifically, the league never released footage of the "Spygate" video and instead destroyed
the tapes and notes.
Years later, the Patriots were involved in another cheating scandal.
This time, legendary quarterback Tom Brady was at the center of a controversy dubbed
"Deflategate."
Opponents claimed Brady used intentionally deflated footballs while playing to help improve
his accuracy.
As a result, according to ESPN, the NFL spent over $22 million investigating Tom Brady and
the New England Patriots.
The quarterback was suspended for four games.
If you grew up watching NFL football, you always knew there was a possibility your team
wouldn't appear on TV that week –- an occurrence known as a “blackout,” which was intended
to help sell tickets and fill stadiums.
In 1973, the NFL instituted the policy, which stated that a game must be blacked out on
local TV markets if fewer than 85 percent of available seats have been sold 72 hours
prior to kickoff.
For example, the Buffalo Bills in 2013 were at risk of having a home game blacked out
if they couldn't sell 7,000 tickets.
Despite providing $15 discounts, the NFL had to step in and give the team a 24-hour extension,
allowing the owner of the Bills, Ralph Wilson, to swoop in and buy the remaining tickets
himself.
He even used the same tactic a month later.
But that December, the team finally had its first legit blackout.
In 2015, the NFL finally suspended its controversial blackout rule.
If you've ever seen an advertisement on TV or in person for "The Big Game," it is likely
referring to the Super Bowl.
But why?
"Hey!
The big game's here and the whole team's coming over."
The reason for this common practice is because you need to pay a fee to the NFL in order
to use the phrase “Super Bowl” in ads.
The NFL first trademarked the phrase Super Bowl in 1969 and later added the phrase "Super
Sunday" to its list of trademarks.
For those in violation, no matter how small, the NFL often notices.
Like when the league threatened legal action against a pastor in Indiana for hosting a
church-sponsored party to watch the Super Bowl with a $3 admission fee.
The NFL claimed other churches were breaking its copyright laws by charging people to view
the game.
The NFL also used to forbid viewing parties on TV screens over 55 inches, but after receiving
backlash, the league ultimately exempted churches from the rule, according to the Washington
Post.
In a 2016 pre-season game between the San Diego Chargers and the San Francisco 49ers,
quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a stand.
Or rather, the 49ers QB kneeled.
During the national anthem, Kaepernick and teammate Eric Reid kneeled to protest police
brutality and racism in the United States.
While Kaepernick had previously remained seated during the Anthem as a statement prior to
this game, he’d drawn criticism for seeming disrespectful to those in the armed forces.
Kaepernick consulted with Nate Boyer, a former member of the United States Army Special Forces,
to see if there was a way he could protest racial inequality and police brutality in
the United States without offending people in the military.
Boyer told Kaepernick that kneeling seemed appropriate.
While the move was celebrated by many as a brave statement, it started a wave of controversy
involving politics and professional sports.
The quarterback later explained that he made his statement in support of America and racial
equality.
"I want to help make America better.
I think having these conversations helps everybody have a better understanding of where everybody
is coming from.”
In a statement to AP, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said about Kaepernick,
"I don't necessarily agree with what he is doing."
Meanwhile, then-president Barack Obama voiced his support for the football player.
"Part of what makes this country special is that we respect peoples' rights to have a
different opinion."
After the season, no NFL team would sign Kaepernick.
One of the earliest professional football teams on the East Coast was the Boston Braves,
which changed its name to the Boston Redskins in 1933.
The team's owner, George Preston Marshall, said at the time that he changed the name
to avoid confusion with the baseball team of the same name.
The football team then moved to the nation's capital in 1937 and became the Washington
Redskins.
As if the name wasn't offensive enough, Marshall's wife wrote the team's fight song, which included
controversial lyrics.
As The Washington Post reports, it wasn't until 1961 that Marshall, "under pressure
from the Kennedy White House, [became] the last NFL owner to integrate his team."
Then, in 1972, Native American leaders asked the team's president to choose a new team
name.
This began a contentious back and forth for decades involving trademark registrations,
presidential comments, and increased pressure to change the team name.
But when asked if he would consider changing the team name in 2013, owner Dan Snyder was
adamant that he would never change the name.
Never say never because the team released a statement in 2020 announcing that they would
be retiring the name.
The team became known as the Washington Football Team as a temporary solution until deciding
on the next name.
In 2022, the team was renamed the Washington Commanders.
One of the long-standing tarnishes on professional baseball is the use of steroids by its star
players.
Starting in the late '80s and until the MLB started testing for performance-enhancing
drugs in 2003, many players allegedly used the drugs to help improve their hitting power.
The NFL was also a common place for athletes to look for a competitive advantage with performance-enhancing
drugs.
Former player Akbar Gbajabiamila said a popular drug of choice in the NFL during the early
aughts was Toradol, often referred to as "T-train."
Though Toradol is a nonsteroidal, anti-inflammatory drug, Gbajabiamila told the NFL,
"I felt like it gave me an edge, but in reality I was just on an even playing field because
this was customary in every locker room around the league.”
In 2015, another player told Bleacher Report that while steroids were less widely used,
"HGH is the big problem.
For the past four or five years, the league has been almost overrun by HGH."
Allegedly, the NFL's testing procedures weren't robust enough to catch players using the drug.
In fact, the publication estimated that between 10 and 40 percent of NFL players at the time
used HGH.
News network Al Jazeera suggested in a documentary that famous quarterback Peyton Manning used
HGH.
The claims were never substantiated, and in 2021, Peyton Manning was inducted into the
Pro Football Hall of Fame.
In the 2009 NFL season, the New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl.
It might have been a time of celebration for New Orleans, but behind the scenes, some coaches
and players began a disturbing practice.
According to ESPN, starting that season and through 2011, the Saints used a bounty system
that incentivized players to deliberately injure their opponents with hard hits, literally
paying out bonuses to players who did serious damage.
An NFL investigation found that over 20 players actively participated in pooling money for
the bounty and that head coach Sean Payton knew about the operation and let it continue.
As a result, Payton was suspended from the league for a year without pay, and the team
was fined $500,000 in addition to losing draft picks.
On the "Going Deep" podcast, former Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison said he
was once paid money for a monster hit in 2010 on wide receiver Mohamed Massaquoi.
At the time, the NFL fined Harrison $50,000.
After hearing the story, Steelers president Art Rooney II said,
"I am very certain nothing like this ever happened.
There is simply no basis for believing anything like this."
Meanwhile, Payton told 105.7 The Fan ["one oh five seven"] that the NFL would likely
never investigate Harrison's claim and called his previous investigation a "sham."
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