So the rumor now is that Pacman Jones might be suspended by the NFL for failing to report two arrests in 2006 for marijuana possession and obstruction of a police officer.
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| Pacman Jones has had more success on the field than he has had off it lately. (Getty Images) |
But until Jones is suspended, and until we know for how long, we remain unconvinced that the NFL isn't going to try to do what it has always done when confronted by any public shame issue -- skate by on its good looks.
That is, when it isn't trying to flout copyright laws, claim actual English words in common use as their sole domain and property and all in all make you long for the good old days of the Bulgarian Communist Party.
See, over the years that baseball has been beaten stupid about its performance enhancing drugs policy and general public relations bungling, Bud Selig has steadfastly maintained that his sport was being held to a much higher standard than the others, which for some reason he objected to.
As it turns out, what he wanted to say but never did was, "You're missing the way bigger picture."
Well, now we're not, and Pacman Jones is only the symptomology.
Not only is the NFL now confronting their own laughable drug policy ("best in professional sports," my ear) by watching Shawne Merriman become the poster child for cheating rewarded, people are now charting NFL legal problems and finding that the average is about one every 1 1/3 days.
According to the insomniacs at Pro Football Talk and their elegantly named compendium of misbehavior called "Turd Watch," there have been 10 arrests, seven guilty pleas and a drug diversion entrance since the Super Bowl, and that doesn't count the party at Patrick Kerney's house in which a rape took place. That's in six weeks, kids. And with Jones as the poster child, the NFL looks more and more like a hiring hall for meatheads.
Of course, with 1,500 players, we are talking about a small sample size. What we are actually talking about, though, is the shifting perception of NFL players as drunken, profligate, conscienceless louts being given pass after pass by their money and their employers, the ones who need a pass blocker, a shutdown corner, a directional punter more than they need a tolerable image.
In other words, Pacman Jones is about to pay for a lot of other sins as well as his own. Goodell finds himself in a corner that discomfits him sufficiently to start looking like the no-strikes-and-you're-out commissioner. Years of Paul Tagliabue's diffident, bulletproof, myopic leadership are coming home to roost, right on Goodell's younger, more PR-sensitive head.
So the question now is what he intends to do about it after what he decides to do about Pacman Jones. Jones is the easy one, because we all heard about his "make it rain" escapade. But it's the other arrests, the parade of DUIs and guns and dope and the steroid scandal that has enveloped the Steelers' medical department as well as the Carolina case. The NFL is in image retreat, and since there are currently no games with which to distract us from the seamier underbellies, it is Roger Goodell's biggest challenge.
At least it is now. Eventually, it will be more stadium roulette, or officiating, or the NFL Network, or other aspects of money generation, that will divert his attention, but right now he has Pacman Jones. Dealing with him, even if on the technicality of non-reporting two arrests, won't be nearly enough if Goodell wants to look like the Deportment Commissioner, but he will make it a start. We will see how earnest he is about finishing.
Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.
