Football and Domestic Vioence

When you look at this picture, are you surprised that so many football players are involved in domestic violence?  First Ray Rice, now Adrian Peterson is charged with beating his four-year-old child with a switch.  Some of the pictures of the little boy show huge welts and broken skin.  Of course we hear more about football players because they are famous, because they are our heroes, right?  We don't hear about the guy down the street who punches his wife. 

Football players are paid millions of dollars to play a game that's all about slamming the opposing players to the ground.  (Fortunately, they don't get to stomp on them afterward.)  We applaud those guys for being as rough and tough as they can.  I'm not being critical of other fans.  I'm with 'em.  I love to see the opposing quarterback sacked or the wide receiver shoved out of bounds before he can catch a pass.

This week's pre-game article in the Houston paper mentioned that one of the guards has "the nasty attitude coaches love." After all that praise for doing what they're paid to do, we expect them to go home and do what we tell kids to do--use their words instead of their fists in a domestic argument.  I don't know--maybe that's hard for them.  Some of them--I'm not generalizing to all of them--may cone from backgrounds where tough guy behavior is the norm.  Peterson's lawyer said he was only disciplining his child the way his father disciplined him.  But that's no excuse, is it?. 

And the NFL needs to get on board and discipline these men who are acting like animals and lashing out with all their strength.  Maybe anger management needs to be as important a part of football training as tackling and running plays.  What do you think?