Even with business suffering, the National Football League oozes inconsistency.
It is more committed to punishing peaceful protesters than ridding itself of men who beat women.
With the league’s approval, halfback Kareem Hunt received a contract last week from the Cleveland Browns. A rival team, the Kansas City Chiefs, fired Hunt late last season, after TMZ Sports posted a surveillance video that showed him pushing and kicking a woman in a hotel.
The Cleveland team decided to employ Hunt, 23, because he can run over musclebound 220-pound safeties. This was more important to the Browns’ brass than his conduct the night he put his hands and feet on a woman half that size.
It took Hunt less than three months to find a new employer in the NFL. He probably will serve a suspension of six games before he plays again. But play he will.
The Browns, who were pro football’s worst team in recent years, showed signs of respectability on the field last season. They don’t much care that Hunt is not respectable off it.
They have made a Faustian bargain.
Hunt might be able to help them reach the playoffs for the first time since 2002. They hope any public backlash will be gone with the wins.
There might never be a comeback for quarterback Colin Kaepernick. He once led the San Francisco 49ers to a Super Bowl, but he has been out of football for the last two seasons.
Kaepernick, 31, committed no crime. The NFL, though, has plenty of footage of him doing something it considers more damning than battering a woman.
He regularly took a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality, especially excessive and deadly force against black people.
For this, the NFL holds Kaepernick in lower regard than a violent lawbreaker.
Many teams last season signed quarterbacks who had never achieved much of anything in the pros. None offered Kaepernick a contract.
You don’t have to be a professional scout to know that Kaepernick is a better player than one Derek Anderson. Anderson, 35, was spending his days on the golf course when the Buffalo Bills called. They gave him another chances to start in the NFL, even though he never had a fraction of the success Kaepernick did.
Kaepernick was too hot for teams to handle.
President Donald Trump, who will say anything to rile his base, once traveled to friendly turf in Alabama to exploit the hostility directed at Kaepernick and a few other players.
“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired,’ ” Trump said.
Some NFL owners no doubt agreed with Trump’s sentiments. Many of those who didn’t were too gutless to challenge a president who descended to name-calling and assaults on the First Amendment.
Just days after the Browns signed Hunt, Kaepernick settled his collusion grievance against the NFL. The terms are secret.
I never saw that deal coming. I figured Kaepernick’s lawyer would dig up and publicize evidence that he had been blacklisted.
After Kaepernick knelt and Trump played the role of stadium patriot, NFL owners complained about sinking television ratings and weak sales of merchandise.
Those sorts of business considerations didn’t matter to the league or the Browns when it came to hiring Hunt.
That’s what the NFL has become — a multibillion-dollar business with a double standard.
So the next time team owners whine about those declining television ratings, they ought to consider their own irrational practices.
They’ve given Hunt, who could have landed in jail, a second chance.
Kaepernick is standing outside the stadium, probably forever.
Ringside Seat is an opinion column about people, politics and news. Contact Milan Simonich at [email protected] or 505-986-3080.
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