Clay Travis v. The NFL
If tough cases make bad law, then misguided opinion makes bad argument.
Clay Travis is guilty of a gross misunderstanding of the law, the rights of individuals, and the rights of businesses to regulate themselves under the law. In an opinion written for CBS Sportsline.com, Travis has taken NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to task for his recent handling of Adam “Pac-Man” Jones, and warns the commissioner not to take the same approach with regard to Michael Vick or others.
In particular, Travis said, “Even now, I would implore Emperor Goodell to clarify his new personal conduct policy and announce that the NFL simply will take no action against players, coaches, or employees until the American judicial system has rendered judgment on these cases.”
Travis’ main contention is that the commissioner is acting imperially and unfairly with regard to players who have not had their day in court, and that Goodell may be opening up the NFL to a lawsuit the size of the tax code.
He could not be more wrong.
In fact, one wonders if he slept all the way through Civics, or just the parts in the Bill of Rights that bored him.
The NFL is a privately owned business. As such, it can demand whatever it wants of its employees, provided it does not demand something illegal or immoral. Those employees can choose to follow the guidelines of the NFL, or they can seek employment elsewhere. A code of conduct that demands a high level of personal accountability, even a higher standard than that required by the law, is perfectly within the NFL’s purview.
In other words, if the commissioner tells players that even being arrested is enough to warrant suspension, then those players can either avoid all appearance of improper activity, or they can seek employment elsewhere.
And this is the larger point that Travis misses. Playing in the NFL is not a right guaranteed under the Constitution, but a privilege. Players don’t have to play in the NFL. They can take their college degrees (snicker) and find employment elsewhere. Of course, finding a job that carries the pay and perks of the NFL may be a bit more difficult than the average nickel back thinks, but I digress. The point is that individuals in this country are free to seek employment with whoever will hire them. If they choose to work for the NFL, they will follow the new code of conduct or they will be unemployed.
Roger Goodell is the custodian of a multi-billion dollar empire on which the sun never sets, and the reason that the league is so huge is because it is rightly concerned with its image in the public eye. Goodell’s job is not to be concerned with the workings of the American judicial system, which may or may not mete out swift judgment – one might recall a certain defensive tackle for the Bears being allowed to play in the Super Bowl before being sent to the hoosegow – but to run the NFL and protect its image at all costs.
Amazingly, Travis fails to take into account that the NFL is an entertainment business which relies upon the public for its livelihood. The NFL is accountable to the public that pays for overpriced game day tickets, felonious seat licenses, publicly-funded stadiums, exclusionary broadcast tactics, exorbitant image and licensing fees, and any number of other schemes to separate Joe Fan from his dollar. (Somewhere, P.T. Barnum is weeping with pride; here’s a league that gets it.) A league that lives by its image cannot allow for bad publicity.
Of course, if Travis had done a little homework, he might have known that this situation is not without historical precedent. In 1919, the wake of a betting scandal involving the World Series that would have killed the sport, Kenesaw Mountain Landis was appointed as commissioner with an eye to cleaning the sport up. The first thing the former trust busting federal judge did was kick the lot of them out indefinitely, pending the outcome of their trials. You’ll note that he didn’t wait for due process either, deeming the image of his sport more important than court proceedings, and he was right to do so. Then, even when some of the players in question had been cleared of charges, Landis had the testicular fortitude to issue the following statement:
“Regardless of the verdicts of juries, no player who entertains proposals or promises to throw a game, no player who sits in conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing games are discussed and does not promptly tell the club about it will ever play professional baseball again. I don’t know that any of these men will apply for reinstatement, but if they do, the above are at least a few of the rules that will be enforced.” – Baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, August 3, 1921.
If, as Travis erroneously suggests, Goodell needs to be a jurist as Paul Tagliabue was, perhaps he should consider the fact that Landis was the federal judge who threw the book at John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil in the early 1900’s. It is particularly telling that a former lawyer and judge would use this kind of language because, as Travis says of Goodell, “…its very sweep is so astounding.”
That is precisely the case. We are dealing with an astounding sweep here, because the issue is not the rights of one individual player but the perception of the league as a whole. When Landis made his decision, the point was clear to even the dullest of players: be seen in the same room as a gambler, find another job.
Goodell has taken a similar stance and it is the right stance to take. No one is saying that a grown man can’t go to a strip club; millions of grown men do. However, millions of grown men manage to go to strip clubs every year and are not involved with shootings that paralyze a man from the chest down, as Pac-Man Jones is. No one is saying that a grown man can’t own a pit bull. However, everyone who owns a pit bull does not train the animal for fighting, as it is becoming rapidly clear that Michael Vick does. Goodell was right to drop the hammer on Pac-Man, and he’ll be similarly right to drop the same hammer on Ron Mexico.
While Travis is concerned with the rights of these individuals, let me assure him that they are protected by law. In fact, he sounds like those knuckleheads who cry about free speech whenever someone is fired for saying something stupid. All freedom of speech guarantees is that there will be no charges for speaking freely. It doesn’t mean that a company is bound to continue employing someone who keeps spouting off. In the same way, the NFL is not bound to keep employing players whose names keep showing up on the police blotter, pending outcomes be damned.
(And, while I'm at it, let me remind Travis that an acquittal does NOT mean that the accused is necessarily innocent. Acquittals are granted for a number of reasons, many of which are procedural in nature - misplaced evidence, failure of a witness to testify, plea agreements, hung juries, etc. Anyone can get acquitted; just ask O.J. Simpson.)
Roger Goodell has every right to set the code of conduct for the NFL as high as he likes, and the employees of his league can either follow that code or get another job. Clay Travis is just wrong.
Too bad he doesn’t know it.
Clay Travis is guilty of a gross misunderstanding of the law, the rights of individuals, and the rights of businesses to regulate themselves under the law. In an opinion written for CBS Sportsline.com, Travis has taken NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to task for his recent handling of Adam “Pac-Man” Jones, and warns the commissioner not to take the same approach with regard to Michael Vick or others.
In particular, Travis said, “Even now, I would implore Emperor Goodell to clarify his new personal conduct policy and announce that the NFL simply will take no action against players, coaches, or employees until the American judicial system has rendered judgment on these cases.”
Travis’ main contention is that the commissioner is acting imperially and unfairly with regard to players who have not had their day in court, and that Goodell may be opening up the NFL to a lawsuit the size of the tax code.
He could not be more wrong.
In fact, one wonders if he slept all the way through Civics, or just the parts in the Bill of Rights that bored him.
The NFL is a privately owned business. As such, it can demand whatever it wants of its employees, provided it does not demand something illegal or immoral. Those employees can choose to follow the guidelines of the NFL, or they can seek employment elsewhere. A code of conduct that demands a high level of personal accountability, even a higher standard than that required by the law, is perfectly within the NFL’s purview.
In other words, if the commissioner tells players that even being arrested is enough to warrant suspension, then those players can either avoid all appearance of improper activity, or they can seek employment elsewhere.
And this is the larger point that Travis misses. Playing in the NFL is not a right guaranteed under the Constitution, but a privilege. Players don’t have to play in the NFL. They can take their college degrees (snicker) and find employment elsewhere. Of course, finding a job that carries the pay and perks of the NFL may be a bit more difficult than the average nickel back thinks, but I digress. The point is that individuals in this country are free to seek employment with whoever will hire them. If they choose to work for the NFL, they will follow the new code of conduct or they will be unemployed.
Roger Goodell is the custodian of a multi-billion dollar empire on which the sun never sets, and the reason that the league is so huge is because it is rightly concerned with its image in the public eye. Goodell’s job is not to be concerned with the workings of the American judicial system, which may or may not mete out swift judgment – one might recall a certain defensive tackle for the Bears being allowed to play in the Super Bowl before being sent to the hoosegow – but to run the NFL and protect its image at all costs.
Amazingly, Travis fails to take into account that the NFL is an entertainment business which relies upon the public for its livelihood. The NFL is accountable to the public that pays for overpriced game day tickets, felonious seat licenses, publicly-funded stadiums, exclusionary broadcast tactics, exorbitant image and licensing fees, and any number of other schemes to separate Joe Fan from his dollar. (Somewhere, P.T. Barnum is weeping with pride; here’s a league that gets it.) A league that lives by its image cannot allow for bad publicity.
Of course, if Travis had done a little homework, he might have known that this situation is not without historical precedent. In 1919, the wake of a betting scandal involving the World Series that would have killed the sport, Kenesaw Mountain Landis was appointed as commissioner with an eye to cleaning the sport up. The first thing the former trust busting federal judge did was kick the lot of them out indefinitely, pending the outcome of their trials. You’ll note that he didn’t wait for due process either, deeming the image of his sport more important than court proceedings, and he was right to do so. Then, even when some of the players in question had been cleared of charges, Landis had the testicular fortitude to issue the following statement:
“Regardless of the verdicts of juries, no player who entertains proposals or promises to throw a game, no player who sits in conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing games are discussed and does not promptly tell the club about it will ever play professional baseball again. I don’t know that any of these men will apply for reinstatement, but if they do, the above are at least a few of the rules that will be enforced.” – Baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, August 3, 1921.
If, as Travis erroneously suggests, Goodell needs to be a jurist as Paul Tagliabue was, perhaps he should consider the fact that Landis was the federal judge who threw the book at John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil in the early 1900’s. It is particularly telling that a former lawyer and judge would use this kind of language because, as Travis says of Goodell, “…its very sweep is so astounding.”
That is precisely the case. We are dealing with an astounding sweep here, because the issue is not the rights of one individual player but the perception of the league as a whole. When Landis made his decision, the point was clear to even the dullest of players: be seen in the same room as a gambler, find another job.
Goodell has taken a similar stance and it is the right stance to take. No one is saying that a grown man can’t go to a strip club; millions of grown men do. However, millions of grown men manage to go to strip clubs every year and are not involved with shootings that paralyze a man from the chest down, as Pac-Man Jones is. No one is saying that a grown man can’t own a pit bull. However, everyone who owns a pit bull does not train the animal for fighting, as it is becoming rapidly clear that Michael Vick does. Goodell was right to drop the hammer on Pac-Man, and he’ll be similarly right to drop the same hammer on Ron Mexico.
While Travis is concerned with the rights of these individuals, let me assure him that they are protected by law. In fact, he sounds like those knuckleheads who cry about free speech whenever someone is fired for saying something stupid. All freedom of speech guarantees is that there will be no charges for speaking freely. It doesn’t mean that a company is bound to continue employing someone who keeps spouting off. In the same way, the NFL is not bound to keep employing players whose names keep showing up on the police blotter, pending outcomes be damned.
(And, while I'm at it, let me remind Travis that an acquittal does NOT mean that the accused is necessarily innocent. Acquittals are granted for a number of reasons, many of which are procedural in nature - misplaced evidence, failure of a witness to testify, plea agreements, hung juries, etc. Anyone can get acquitted; just ask O.J. Simpson.)
Roger Goodell has every right to set the code of conduct for the NFL as high as he likes, and the employees of his league can either follow that code or get another job. Clay Travis is just wrong.
Too bad he doesn’t know it.
Labels: Adam "Pac-Man" Jones, Clay Travis, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Michael Vick, NFL, Roger Goodell
posted by van walker | 6:37 AM
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