The NFL Doesn't Care About Women

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Let's be clear on one thing right off the bat: the NFL doesn't hate women.

No, the NFL can't hate women, because to hate someone or something, you have to give that person or thing a measure of attention and importance, and it's obvious by now that the powers that be at the National Football League have never in their lives spared a passing thought for women.

Oh sure, long enough to dye some merchandise pink - but that's not about women, really, it's about women's money.

Then again, why should we be surprised? The NFL doesn't care about the health and safety of its own players until its bottom line is threatened, so why should it care about the women those players spend their time with?

The NFL decided that "probably knowing" that someone was deflating footballs was worth twice as many games suspended and $941,177 more in fines than beating a woman. Sure, Ray Rice ended up missing more games, but not until a horrific video surfaced and the NFL was facing public anger.

But we never stay very angry for long, do we? Ben Roethlisberger, serial rapist, takes the field every Sunday for Pittsburgh. Oh, and by the way, the suspension he served? Four games.

Darryl Washington smoked marijuana - a victimless crime, and completely legal now in multiple states - and he was suspended sixteen games. So, according to the NFL's metric, using a drug that can hardly be considered performance enhancing is eight times worse than beating a woman, and four times worse than sexually assaulting multiple women.

Terrelle Pryor was suspended five games for accepting gifts while in college. So accepting free stuff [when the NCAA is phenomenally broken] is two-and-a-half times as bad as beating a woman, and 25% worse than sexually assaulting multiple women.

[In case you think the Ray Rice penalty was some sort of exception, Sam Brandon, Leroy Hill, Brandon Underwood, and Cary Williams  were all suspended just two games for beating women.]

"But what they do off the field doesn't interfere with the integrity of the game the way deflating footballs does," you might protest, if you're an asshole who thinks having rapists and woman-beaters on the field doesn't affect the integrity of the game.

If you genuinely see no problem with the punishments laid out by the NFL in response to various infractions, I want you to look every woman you know in the face and tell them that you are more concerned with deflating footballs and smoking marijuana than you would be by their abuser being on the field.

Even if there was video proof that Tom Brady let air out of those footballs personally, while smoking a blunt and giggling to himself, his transgressions would not be worse than those of Rice, Roethlisberger, Brandon, Hill, Underwood, and Williams.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that cheating on the field is acceptable, or even that Brady shouldn't be punished - the point of all this is that the NFL's own metric for punishment values the lives and safety of women less than it does a few hisses of air from game balls.

The NFL doesn't care about women. The NFL has never, ever cared about women - even when they try to pay lip service to the idea, it rings hollow.

The NFL doesn't care about women, so I'm done with the NFL. I'm not buying any more merchandise, or watching anymore games until they make this right.

Given their track record, I think it's safe to assume I'll be strictly a baseball fan from here on out.

Seriously Unserious: Episode 6

A satirical look at real sports headlines.

Also be sure to check out the earlier installments:

• Episode 5
• Episode 4
• Episode 3
• Episode 2
• Episode 1

The Showdown

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This afternoon's game between the Patriots and the Broncos has been broken down and analyzed and predicted so many times over that it's become tedious.

It's Brady v. Manning, winner gets an all-expense paid trip to the Superbowl - and even as a Patriots fan, I've heard every point of analysis so many times that I change the channel the minute I see anything related to this game on the SportsCenter rundown.

There's nothing left to say about this game that hasn't been repeated ad nauseam all week - but luckily kickoff is just hours away.

Happy Super Bowl Sunday!

I'm sure many of you are still mourning the fact that the Patriots will be watching this game on television just like us, after coming so close only to be eliminated in the penultimate round. Perhaps some of you are planning to root for the Ravens, because they play in the AFC with the Patriots - or maybe you can't stand to see the Ravens win again, so you're going to cheer on the 49ers?

Maybe you don't care who wins anymore, and you're just looking forward to a game that you can watch and be totally relaxed, unconcerned for the outcome. And then there are those of you who couldn't care less about football if you tried, are just biding your time until pitchers and catchers, and might turn on the Puppy Bowl later if you get bored and/or starved for cuteness.

I decided a while back that the playoffs are always more fun if you have a team to root for, even if your first choice has been eliminated. This year during the MLB playoffs, I arbitrarily chose to root for the Orioles and Giants for the duration, and lo and behold, the Giants went and won the whole damn thing.

And since I bought some Giants merchandise to celebrate, MLB.com doesn't know what to sell me anymore.

I've decided to stick with my winning city for this Super Bowl, and root for the 49ers, though I know even less about them than I did about the Giants (to be fair, I know at least a few players on every baseball team, but next to nothing about most football teams outside the Patriots and their perennial rivals).  So I hope no diehard 49ers fans will be upset that I'm jumping on their bandwagon so late - I seemed to be good luck for the Giants!

This must be how it feels to be a Yankees fan...

Last night, the Patriots lost to the Ravens. Everyone on my Twitter and Facebook feeds who lives outside of New England was jubilant, while I was morose. I know that it's kind of ridiculous to mourn a Patriots loss in the penultimate round of the playoffs, especially when they so regularly play in the postseason, and have certainly won their share of Super Bowls in my lifetime, but that doesn't lessen the immediate feeling of disappointment.

I'm perfectly aware of the vitriol that most of the country feels towards the Patriots, and I like to think that it's similar to how I (along with millions of others) feel about the New York Yankees [though the comparison falls apart when you remember that the Yankees spend tens of millions of dollars more than anyone else, while the Pats operate with the same salary cap as every other NFL team].

The Patriots are elite year after year. The quarterback married a supermodel, and even does some modeling of his own. The coach is surly and aloof, and the franchise was unlucky enough to be caught filming the opposition's signs (though you're deluding yourself if you think the Pats were the only team doing that).

I fully understand why people don't like the Patriots. If I was from another region of the country, I probably wouldn't like them very much myself. But it does make it hard to deal with a big loss when you know that virtually everyone in the country is celebrating. This experience doesn't make me any less eager to savor the schadenfreude when the Yankees lose, but I do at least feel an inkling of what their fans must feel.