Northeastern Expert: NFL Platform May Stir Discussion Of Domestic Violence
BOSTON (CBS) – With controversy swirling around the NFL's handling of the Ray Rice domestic violence incident and questions of what league officials knew and when, one expert says the bigger question is what effect it has on attitudes toward violence against women.
Dan Lebowitz, executive director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University, told WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Anthony Silva that while people are focusing on what this means for the future of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, he thinks attention should be turned to the issue of domestic violence.
"How come it's taken us so long to pay attention to gender violence and is it something like the celebrity platform of the NFL that's going to galvanize that national and international conversation that we should have been having a long time ago," Lebowitz asked.
When a video was released by TMZ Monday of the Baltimore Ravens running back hitting Janay Palmer —now his wife — at an Atlantic City casino in February, the NFL said it had asked for but could not obtain the video. On Wednesday, days after Rice was cut by the Ravens and banned from the NFL indefinitely, a law enforcement official said he sent the video to the NFL in April.
Lebowitz noted that domestic violence isn't isolated to the NFL and high profile incidents have occurred in the worlds of business and politics.
He added that it's not a first for the NFL.
"It's somewhat ironic that a few years back a player for the Kansas City Chiefs shot his then girlfriend nine times and it didn't galvanize this conversation," Lebowitz said, referring to Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher's fatal shooting of Kasandra M. Perkins and then himself on Dec. 1, 2012.
The difference, Lebowitz said, is the video of the Rice incident.
"Given that we live in a virtual world and given that that video's gone viral, and everybody's seen it and people have to look at it, it's hard to look away from it," he said "It has galvanized a conversation and when you look at that kind of a situation, because of the platform of sport, because of how much we pay attention to sport in our country and external to our country it has galvanized a daily conversation that I hope will not go away."
Lebowitz pointed to the ability of the league to weather recent criticism over handling of player concussions and said it remains to be seen what impact there will be on the NFL brand from the Ray Rice case.
"The brand of the NFL and the product that they put forth in many respects is a great product," Lebowitz said. "I don't want to defame the NFL because they had an incident that isn't just isolated to the NFL."
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