Super Bowl XLVII was played in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana on February 3, 2013. An important number coming out of that championship game is 33. No, that was not the final score of the game. That game ended in a thrilling 34-31 victory for the Baltimore Ravens. Rather, 33 is the number of professional football players who have been arrested since Coach John Harbaugh and Super Bowl MVP Joey Flacco hoisted up the Vince Lombardi trophy in victory.
Since that celebration, 33 athletes from the NFL have been arrested for crimes ranging from DUIs, drugs and weapons charges, child abuse, disorderly conduct, and most disturbingly, Aaron Hernandez’s recent arrest for the alleged murder of 27-year old Odin Lloyd. To say that these figures are shocking would be an understatement. To say that these figures are a surprise however would be ignorant.
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| Photo Courtesy of Ted Fitzgerald / Boston Herald pool via AP file |
According to an analysis conducted by a Reddit user, 655 NFL players have been arrested since 2000. The top offending teams are the Cincinnati Bengals (which to most football fans does not come as a huge surprise) and the Minnesota Vikings with 40 players arrested respectively. Rounding out the bottom of the list are the St. Louis Rams and the Houston Texans who each have had nine players arrested since 2000.
A little math: if a person were to take the average number of professional football players arrested per year since 2000, that number would be 50. If one were to break it down even further, he or she would see that that figure would average out to roughly 4 arrests per month. This year, the arrests around the NFL are trending ahead of that pace. Based on the number of arrests so far, there could be roughly 66 NFL players arrested before this year is over.
Again, these numbers are shocking. But if one simply followed the trends, they are not surprising.
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| Photo Courtesy of Reddit |
The violent nature of these crimes always creates a public outcry. People want justice. People want answers from the league’s front offices. Many Americans view these athletes as public figures who are supposed to be model citizens and role models for our nation’s youth, not persons engaged in criminal activity.
Yet according to the numbers, many of these players are engaged in criminal activity. Based on the public record, 33 arrests have been made so far. That number could double by year’s end. And here is what the National Football League and its commissioner, Roger Goodell, is going to do about the growing number of professional football players getting into trouble with the law: nothing.
The NFL is going to do nothing. Roger Goodell is going to do nothing. Why? Because for all of their talents, these players are just cogs in the big-money machine that is the National Football League.
Think about this issue theoretically. Any high-profile company would suffer major public image losses should 655 of their employees be arrested in nearly 13 years. There could be potential revenue losses, a depletion of that company’s overhead, and major cutbacks throughout the years. Yet this hasn’t happened in the NFL. In fact, the gross revenue for NFL a couple of years ago was somewhere in the vicinity of $9.3 billion. That is head-and-shoulders above the gross revenues of the MLB, NBA, and NHL.
According to a study conducted by Professor Kevin M. Murphy and Professor Robert H. Topel, the value of the NFL’s 32 teams has quadrupled since 1998. The average NFL team is worth just about $1 billion. In 2008, the average team earned about $25 million.
Where is this money coming from? First, the NFL receives a huge sum from the major television networks for the rights to broadcast football games. Networks like Fox, ESPN, CBS, NBC, and DirecTV’s Sunday Ticket contribute $4 billion to the NFL’s coffers. Then add in the stadium sponsorships. Teams collect as much as $30 million on 10-year stadium sponsorship deals. Another piece of the pie is all of the corporate sponsorships. Companies cannot wait to associate their brands with the NFL. Nike has paid the NFL $1.1 billion to be the league’s chief apparel sponsor. Verizon paid $720 million to be the league’s wireless provider. Oh, and of course, there are all of the beer sponsorships.
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| NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell |
And then of course there are the fans. According to Sports Illustrated, more than 17 million fans paid tickets to watch NFL teams play. It is difficult to assess how much the league earns from tickets and concessions, mainly because the NFL does not open its books. The Green Bay Packers, a publicly-held team, is required to open its books and one can use their numbers as a reference. In 2010, the Packers made $13 million in concessions and about $60 million in ticket sales.
It is precisely because of these figures that the National Football League does not see the criminal behavior of its players as a pressing issue. The endorsements, sponsorships, television rights, tickets and concession sales will continue to pour in in droves. The National Football League is literally a cash cow, an extremely lucrative business that generates a wealth of income season after season. According to the report filed by Professors Murphy and Topel, NFL teams yield a better overall return for an owner than the typical investment on the stock market.
In other words, the NFL is not going anywhere anytime soon. All of the moving parts it has across its 32 teams will continue to hum. All of the business relationships it has made throughout the years will continue to buzz. The players themselves represent just a microcosm of the overall the business plan. Their activity on and off the field does not place the revenue stream in jeopardy. The New England Patriots will find another tight end; the Giants continued to win after Plaxico; the Falcons did better in the long-run without their franchise quarterback.
As John Adams once said, “facts are stubborn things, and whatever be our wishes...they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” The fact is professional football players will continue to get in trouble with the law.
The fact is that this trend does not bother the NFL one bit.
Exactly. The NFL doesn't care because the organization is still making money, will still make money, and whether fans like it or not - every single player in the league is, for the most part, expendable or replaceable. And with the possible exception of Michael Vick (because of course in our culture it's far worse to do harm to animals than other human beings), players are lauded upon their comebacks to the NFL. I mean for goodness sake, look at all the Ray Lewis love the NFL gave last season. Granted, Lewis was never convicted, but he is the example everyone points to as player behaving badly and criminally. I mean, how long after Hernandez' arrest before the memes started popping up on the Internet of Hernandez "calling" Ray Lewis for advice? And yet during the Ravens' Super Bowl run, the NFL did nothing but lavish heaps of praise on him because of his impending retirement. It definitely made the stomach turn a bit.
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