You have to admit, Sue Robinson, the NFL’s disciplinary officer, really threw the booklet at Deshaun Watson eight days ago.
Her decision that his alleged sexual misconduct with 24 massage therapists, in a span of one year, was worth a six-game suspension and amounted to one game for every four victims. She didn’t even fine him.
The leniency of his punishment was so embarrassing that even the National Football League was moved to act, especially given how fervently it pursues female fans.
Commissioner Roger Goodell, whose motto is “protect the (NFL) Shield at all costs,” chose former New Jersey Attorney General Peter Harvey to hear the appeal, in which the league is reportedly seeking a minimum one-year suspension and a fine that some sources suggest might be as much as $1 million, plus treatment for Watson’s sexual behavior.
Still, there’s some concern that the NFL might not want Harvey to repudiate Robinson’s first big ruling. There’s also a thought that ultimately the league wants Watson, one of its biggest stars, back on the field sooner rather than later given the financial impact on TV ratings, gate receipts, merchandise sales and the like.
Robinson has become a bit of a scapegoat, but there are arguments supporting her undeniably sympathetic decision.
She contends that NFL’s rules on player conduct are vague and carelessly written and that she was actually restricted in how punitive her sentence could be.
Robinson’s right.
NEW ENGLAND quarterback Tom Brady got a four-game suspension for supposedly using under-inflated footballs, an act deemed to be a slap at the integrity of the game. And yet, Baltimore running back Ray Race incurred a mere two-game suspension for physically abusing his fiancée in an Atlantic City casino.
Meanwhile, two other running backs, Dallas’ Ezekiel Elliott, for domestic violence against a girlfriend, and Kansas City’s Kareem Hunt, for kicking and pushing a woman at a Cleveland hotel, received six- and eight-game suspensions, respectively. Elliott appealed and lost, Hunt didn’t as the Chiefs immediately cut him after the video surfaced and he had signed with the Browns.
But Rice’s was the league’s biggest blunder. The two-game suspension was roundly criticized for its insensitivity to the victim and even the stoic Goodell, who made the decision, admitted “I got it wrong.”
When a video was made public of Rice punching his fiancée in the face on a casino elevator, an embarrassed NFL reversed course and suspended Rice for the season. But the former Rutgers star appealed, maintaining he was being punished twice for the same crime, which is against league rules.
He won, and though the Ravens had cut him, they still had to pay his salary for that season. But it was a pyrrhic victory, as no other NFL team would sign Rice and his pro career was effectively over.
Though he was only 28, Rice had played six NFL seasons, close to the shelf-life for a pro running back, and his production had already dropped for three straight years.
Watson will be 27 as the season starts and he’s inarguably one of the league’s top five quarterbacks, the position that defines a team’s success. That’s why the Browns sent three first-round draft picks, plus a third and a fourth rounder, to Houston to acquire his rights even though Watson was facing a suspension.
He signed a 5-year, $230 million contract — the most fully-guaranteed pact in NFL history — which is frozen this season and won’t be punitive no matter how much or little he plays this year.
To ease Watson’s transition, the Browns also dumped their adequate starting quarterback, Baker Mayfield, who played hurt most of last season and had more than his share of fans in Cleveland. He now looms as the starter in Carolina.
MEANWHILE, Robinson called Watson’s behavior “predatory” and “egregious,” and she wrote that “the NFL carried its burden to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Mr. Watson engaged in sexual assault (as defined by the NFL).”
However, she maintained flaws in the league’s guidelines, for player misconduct limited her authority to penalize him.
Robinson contended, “Watson’s conduct does not fall into the category of violent conduct that would require the minimum six-game suspension, by far the (league’s) most commonly imposed discipline for domestic or gendered violence and sexual acts.”
Sorry Sue, I’m not buying that one.
When a 6-foot-2, 215-pound professional football player demands — he says it was “consensual” — sex from a massage therapist, it’s absurd not to conclude the possible inference of violence by saying, “No.”
Worse, the lame punishment was handed down by a woman of authority who would be expected to have more sympathy for her gender.
Small wonder so many females are reluctant to issue complaints about sexual misconduct, knowing there’s an excellent chance the man will eventually become the victim.
Here’s hoping Watson draws a year’s suspension, at very least, and the women, 23 of whom have settled their civil suits, get some measure of justice from their stress in the media spotlight. After all, a number of Watson’s fans, who clearly reside in another galaxy, maintain that all two-dozen of them are lying.
And it would also be justice, of the poetic kind, that Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam come to realize their money can’t buy a clean character and they just committed $230 million to a serial sex offender who, by his very presence, has turned most of the NFL’s women fans against the team and the league.
(Chuck Pollock, an Olean Times Herald senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@oleantimesherald.com)
