Athletes and domestic violence

Domestic violence is one of the most common crimes among male athletes.There is an ongoing struggle between sporting leagues, governments, and viewing-families to address the increasing number of domestic violence incidents amongst athletes. American Football, is a sport played professionally in a league known as the National Football League. The NFL is an example of a sporting franchise in which there have been several instances of domestic violence, most often resulting in some sort of violence against women. Other elite sports leagues, such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association(NCAA), National Basketball Association(NBA), as well as the sport of Boxing also employ and commercialize athletes who have committed domestic violence. Most prominent however, are instances of domestic violence that occur in the NFL, due largely to its immense popularity in the United States.

Domestic violence among athletes specifically occurs off the field and is most often perpetrated by collegiate and professional athletes. Women are most often the victims during these perpetrations of violence. football, a high contact sport, is played and watched by millions of Americans, and is at the center of the discussion surrounding domestic violence and major athletes. Scholars have worked on this phenomena considering many variables when attempting to correlate the nature of athletes to domestic violence. As any example, scholars (discussed below) have suggested the behavior exhibited in the football environment can be a potential accelerator or stimulator of domestic violence due to its intrinsically aggressive nature. This trend is not limited to football specifically, athletes in other major sports have also committed domestic violence. Major sports franchises have been increasingly criticized for their lack of punishment in regard to domestic violence.

Domestic abuse among professional athletes is not a new problem, but it became a nationally recognized issue when Baltimore Ravens football player Ray Rice assaulted his then-fiancee, now wife, in 2014 and was only suspended from two NFL games. The incident took place in elevator in a hotel, in which Rice knocks out his wife- the video was released by TMZ. Prior to the incident, the NFL’s conduct policy stated that players would be disciplined for domestic abuse offense, but gave no specifics, so the league was left scrambling to come up with an appropriate punishment for Rice. After receiving a great deal of criticism for the light suspension, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell created new rules for players who abuse a partner, saying the first offense would lead to a six-game suspension without pay and a second offense would lead to being kicked out of the league for at least a year.

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