Today, I’d like to make a comment on Isabelle Bonato’s blog post on the NFL and their actions towards football athlete Ray Rice. In a scandal that was made widely public in where Rice physically abused his wife, the NFL decided to take extreme action and terminated Rice’s contract.
Much like how Commerce students at UBC must maintain an appropriate and positive reflection of Sauder, the responsibilities of NFL athletes exceed the mere actions of scoring field goals. These football stars are the face of NFL and are representations of the NFL’s greatest qualities, such as sportsmanship, honesty, and human decency. When an athlete steps outside these boundaries, they are no longer representing the NFL, and therefore do not belong with the rest of the league. Rice violated one of these expectations, which “tarnished the league’s image” (Pro Football, 2014). It only seems justifiable to remove him from the league.
However, did the league lose a valuable asset? Will they suffer the consequences of both being associated with a criminal and the loss of a skilled athlete? Were the appropriate actions taken in this case? I don’t think they really had a choice. The NFL, after all, is a business, and as we learned in class, ethics in business is unavoidable. How would the public react to the tolerance of these criminal actions? A decline in public interest? Sales? Perhaps even intervention from a human rights coalition? Although the NFL brand and business are damaged from this scandal, these consequences are minimal compared to the public scrutiny that would have ensued had they retained the membership of an athlete associated with physical abuse toward women.