Here is graphic video of a famous football player performing an act of cowardly violence against a defenseless victim. The offender did not receive any penalty for his actions. After committing that crime, the assailant showed no remorse at the condition of the victim, who lay prostrate on the ground. Not disciplined for earlier acts of violence, that player struck again, this time paralyzing his defenseless victim. That victim would eventually die far too young, in part as a consequence of that attack.

For this perpetrator, the response was much worse than insufficient punishment or radio silence. Jack Tatum was celebrated for many of his hits, perhaps most notably the one on Sammy White in Super Bowl XI. The Ray Rice punch makes all of us cringe, but the hit on White―and even more so the one on Darryl Stingley ― should also make us cringe.

Tatum’s kind of violence pervaded the NFL until recently. In the last few years, I have become a bigger football fan as the NFL banned the headhunting and it decreased on the field. The fall in cringe-worthy violence has made it easier to focus on everything I love about football. Billy “White Shoes” Johnson returning a punt, Barry Sanders breaking free, Jerry Kramer pulling on a Packer sweep, Jerry Rice floating through defenses, Adam Vinatieri kicking through the snow, ^[1]Chase note: Really, Andrew? Johnny Unitas surveying the field, Bill Walsh rubbing his chin, Peyton Manning dropping it in the bucket, Aaron Rodgers flicking an easy-to-catch laser, and the list goes on.

None of that has anything to do with inflicting physical harm on another human being. I don’t think I’m alone among football fans in primarily appreciating the aspects of the game that have nothing to do with violence. Still, since the league outlawed many kinds of hits, fans and players have complained that they were making the game into something like flag football. For all the criticism the league deserves for its slow reaction to concussions and many other situations, it also deserves more credit than it has received for taking serious to change the rules (including kickoff returns) to reduce head injuries. If Adam Silver gets endless praise for doing something that just about everybody wanted to see happen, it seems only fair to at least acknowledge actions that were a good deal less popular and have changed the game.

Since the most egregious on-field incidents are finally diminishing, it doesn’t quite add up to me that fans queasy about on-field violence would suddenly now feel worse about it. But other reasons arising from the recent off-field incidents could make us question our fandom. I see two primary candidates, which I will consider in turn:

• Violent off-field behavior is getting worse or is at least not improving.
• The NFL has been far too permissive of intolerable off-field behavior, including domestic violence. By watching football, we fail to appropriately condemn such behavior.

Reason #1 to Question Your Fandom: Off-field violence is getting worse.

Despite crime plummeting around the country, people believe that it is getting worse. Why? We are much more likely to be moved by narratives than by crime statistics. It sure feels like crime in the NFL is getting worse with the recent stories. But they are just a few examples in a league with over 1600 players. To determine the actual trend over time, I looked at the arrest data from USA Today’s NFL Player Arrests database, which has information on 730 player arrests going back to 2000. The data seem to be pretty comprehensive, but my view is that any bias towards not identifying arrests would go towards overestimating recent increases since arrest records have likely gotten more accessible over time. ^[2]For 2014, I turn the number of arrests into an annual rate by accounting for the number of days left in the year.

The data show an increase in the violent crime rate and domestic violence rate around 2005. That increase might occur due to better reporting in later years so that earlier years should have been higher. The more easily-interpretable trend is the fall in arrest rates that starts in about 2008. I do think it is possible that the problem is underreported. I certainly believe strongly in better criminal justice outcomes for the wealthy, so the roughly five arrests per year for domestic violence could understate the true extent of the problem. Still, the data imply that violent crime in general and domestic violence in particular is lower than it was 6-8 years ago. Particularly for domestic violence, the rate of offense may not be increasing, even if it’s certainly increasing on the national radar. On the other hand, we must always keep in mind that domestic violence crimes are chronically underreported, ^[3]As one study noted, women tend to avoid going to the police until it is a life or death matter. which makes it very difficult to track actual rates over any period of time.

I encourage anyone interested to just check out these data. Based on this information, violent crime ^[4]Note that I defined a domestic violence arrest to be any arrest where “Domestic” is mentioned as the category and any violent offense to be an arrest where “Battery,” … Continue reading among NFL players is on the decline. ^[5]Of course, you can see that the graph is a bit choppy. Perhaps 6-8 years from now, where we are now will just be a low point in the cycle, the way 2004 was.

Reason #2 to Question Your Fandom: The NFL is too permissive of off-field violence.

It’s hard to argue with this claim. The league has routinely punished drug offenses, including those for drugs that are not performance-enhancing, much more harshly than offenses such as domestic violence. They are changing that now, but that should have happened a long time ago. The lack of thoroughness, at a minimum, in the initial Rice investigation also speaks to the league not showing sufficient concern for incidents of off-field violence.

Some context is still helpful, however. MLB and the NBA have been no better than the NFL in their track records on domestic violence. Karen Crouse identified at the New York Times last week that the NFL is hardly an outlier among sports leagues in this arena. Out of the four major sports, the NFL has been the only one to have in place a specific policy on domestic violence. Baseball historically has done next to nothing about domestic violence. Basketball players have often not been punished for domestic violence incidents. When punished, they have received suspensions ranging from three games to a maximum of seven games according to what I have been able to find. That seven game suspension represents 8.3% of the NBA season. ^[6]Note that the NBA’s policy apparently allows for ten games for a violent felony conviction, but I do not see an instance in which it was been enforced for domestic violence. In comparison, 538 found that, under the previous NFL policy, the average suspension length for domestic violence in football was 1.5 games, or about 9.4% of the season.

Football is also not alone in the harshness with which it punishes drug offenders compared to domestic violence offenders. First offenses in baseball for steroids result in an 80-game suspension, while first suspensions for other drugs are from 15 to 30 days.

So the NFL has punished domestic violence much too lightly… just like other sports. Leniency on domestic violence makes me queasy about football, I don’t feel any less queasy about watching baseball and basketball.

Note that this is an indictment of all the major sports and it applies more broadly to people who are less likely to have their domestic violence publicized than professional athletes. So the NFL does not get off the hook, but it also does not seem to deserve unique condemnation.

On-field Violence and Off-field Violence

Another reason to consider quitting the NFL would involve players becoming more violent off the field because they played football. On the surface, there seems to be a pretty logical case for this argument. NFL players are asked to inflict physical punishment on each other. Perhaps it doesn’t stop at the white lines. Players could learn to be violent on the field and then carry that behavior off it.

I think that is hard to prove one way or the other, but some related evidence suggests this is probably not true. Economists have found, for example, that having an outlet for violence tends to actually reduce crime. ^[7]In addition, arrest rates for hockey players appear to be very low, which argues against violence in the games translating to violence off the field. Note that I could not verify these data enough to … Continue reading If we are worried about football increasing violence, we might want to look at the people watching the games. Economists have found that fans commit more acts of domestic violence when their favorite team loses.

Overall, the truth is more complicated than the narrative. NFL players are substantially less likely than other men of their age to commit domestic violence, but much more likely when we look only at those earning high incomes. ^[8]It is worth pointing out that most NFL players grew up in much more modest circumstances than the average wealthy American. As shown in the figure above, the trend in NFL violent crime has actually been downwards-to-flat in recent years. And rather than uniquely bad, football appears to have been just very normal in its inadequate handling of domestic violence.

Football is flawed, it’s leadership more so. But the reality just isn’t as bad as the rhetoric right now. Football may lose me one day, but it is much further from losing me than it was in the days of safeties nearly killing receivers over the middle. ^[9]A bet of the week didn’t seem appropriate in the body for this kind of article, but I need to keep my terrible streak going, so here’s the pick: Two-team teaser of Bengals and Falcons, … Continue reading