A Morality of Convenience

On Sunday, February 3, 2013, the National Football League (NFL) will play its penultimate game: the Super Bowl.  This will be the 47th time the National Football Conference (NFC) and the American Football Conference (AFC) will square off to crown its champion and award the Vince Lombardi Trophy.

This year’s contest promised to hold all the intrigue of a classic sporting event: the San Francisco Forty-Niners return to the big stage for the sixth time in a effort to claim it’s sixth ‘Bowl win, and the only team with more than one appearance remaining undefeated; the Baltimore Ravens return to the Dance as they try to send prolific star linebacker Ray Lewis into retirement with a Championship ring; both teams are coached by a Harbaugh brother— Jim from the Forty-Niners, and John from the Ravens; the return of Pro Bowl receiver Randy Moss to the Super Bowl; Veteran Forty-Niner and Ex-Eagle kicker David Ackers inconsistencies versus Ravens rookie sensation Justin Tucker.  The stories go on and on, and this game could be one for the ages.

I am a huge football fan, and have been for most of my life. Mike McCormack’s Eagles, with quarterback Roman Gabriel, tight end Charle Young, wide receiver (now coach) Harold Carmichael, and running back Tommy Sullivan. Back when the Minnesota Vikings were perennial Super Bowl participants, Tom Landry was in Dallas, and the Dolphins went a perfect 14-0 in’72, and then won three more to win the Super Bowl in ’73 over Sonny Jurgensen’s Washington Redskins.  A long time— over thirty-five years.

This past December, we as a nation were shocked into incredulity at the news of the shooting deaths of 26 children and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut.  This tragedy followed on the heels of the theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado last summer that claimed the lives of 12 people.  A nation of violence that has seen sixty-two mass shooting events since 1982; twenty-five of those have occurred since 2006, and a staggering seven of them happened in 2012 alone.

That’s an average of two mass shootings per month for the past thirty years.

We debate tirelessly the issues of gun control, violence in our society, on television, in video games, in music: ineffectual attempts to find a solution to this problem.  We talk about mental health, and the stigma associated with mental health care across the country.  We push our legislators to create new laws concerning guns, mental health, the health care system, lyrics, rating systems for movies, video games, and music.  In other words, we as a nation look for ways we can “fix” the things that plague us as a society.

But I digress.  Super Bowl XLVII is coming up, and one of it stars, Ray Lewis, will be retiring after the game.  It promises to be a spectacle like no other.  And remember, I am a huge football fan— the Super Bowl will be the last and arguably best game of the year.  We won’t see football again until August.

And I won’t be watching.  Why?  Because it’s my small chance to take the moral high ground.  Everyone talks a good game when it comes to violence in America, mostly because talk doesn’t usually involve action, or cost anything.  I know that one person not watching the game isn’t really going to make a whole lot of difference, but if one turns into two, two turns into four, four turns into eight, and on and on, perhaps a voice of significant volume can be raised.

Ray Lewis is going to retire from football.  He will undoubtedly go out as a star, and he is being touted by the media as a role model, someone for kids to look up to, aspire to, etc.  Folks, THIS is the reason, or at least one of them, that violence goes unchecked in our society.  We have a warped sense of heroism, and a lazy sense of morality.  If it’s convenient, it’s moral.  If it’s not convenient, you’re barking up the wrong tree.

Here’s the reason why Ray Lewis shouldn’t have even been allowed to play the game— much less become a star— in the NFL:

On January 31st, 2000, Ray Lewis and two of his friends allegedly stab and beat to death two patrons of the Cobalt Lounge in Atlanta, GA, following Super Bowl XXXIV.  Later in the day, Lewis is arrested and charged with first-degree murder.  He is eventually freed on $1 Million bail.  He later makes a statement, apologizing to the victim’s families as well as his own family.

Witnesses to the murders state that they saw Lewis shoving one of the victims.  Physical evidence is brought to light that blood matching one of the victims was found in Lewis’s Limo.

Ultimately, Lewis enters into a plea bargain, pleading guilty to the misdemeanor of Obstruction of Justice (for telling everyone in his limo to avoid any contact with the police) in exchange for his testimony against his co-defendants. Murder charges against Lewis are dropped and he is given one year’s probation.  

Several years later, Lewis agrees to a $1 million settlement with the daughter of one of the victims in a civil suit filed against him by the victim’s survivors.

Ray Lewis got away with murder.  It cost him money, but no jail time.

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Finally, last year’s contest between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots, televised by the NBC network, drew an average television audience of 111.3 million viewers, and sponsors reportedly shelled out an average of $3.5 million for 30 seconds of ad time (LA Times).

If only a fraction of that 111 million tunes out, and a fraction of that commercial money is affected, perhaps it will start a conversation.

I know it will be a sacrifice, but don’t watch folks.  And post it— let people know you do not support a culture that embraces a morality of convenience.

© Ray Cattie