<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>The NFL's imagemakers must have been beside themselves when Tony Dungy accepted the Lombardi Trophy Sunday night. The first black coach to win a Super Bowl -- and a dignified, clean-living guy to boot -- Dungy said he was proud to show a championship could be won the Lord's way. While NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell basked in that reflected glory, his legal goons made sure that the Super Bowl could not be watched in the Lord's house. League attorneys sent a letter to Fall Creek Baptist Church in Indianapolis, warning it that NFL rules prohibit public places from showing the game on TVs larger than 55 inches or on multiple screens. Churches all over the country canceled their parties; the wrath of the Almighty, it seems, pales in comparison to that of a coven of corporate lawyers.The church crackdown provided an appropriate close to a season of bad behavior and worse judgment in the NFL. To wit: Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman, suspended four games last season for a positive steroids test, will start in Saturday's Pro Bowl. Nine Bengals could be issued orange uniforms of a different sort after their arrests for various crimes. Former Patriots linebacker Ted Johnson revealed last week that multiple concussions, combined with pressure to return to the field quickly, have left him brain-damaged at age 34.Johnson's poignant story drowned in the league-approved hype over beer commercials and halftime celebrities. So did the call by ultimate tough guy Mike Ditka to provide better pensions for former players with ruined bodies. In a country in which baseball's problems are taken up by the federal government, the only public outrage generated among NFL fans seems to happen when the tailgater runs dry.That indifference is a shame. It isn't shocking, given the NFL's ability to seduce the sporting public. The league's deft touch with labor relations, crisis management and image building have created an insatiable hunger for its product and the perception that it is the standard-bearer for how pro sports should operate.But Goodell and predecessors Paul Tagliabue and Pete Rozelle haven't presided over a problem-free league. They have simply managed to push the game's thorny issues into the shadows while brilliantly marketing to Americans' taste for spectacle.When it was revealed that baseball planned to make its Extra Innings pay-TV package available only through DirecTV, Sen. John Kerry took it up with the Federal Communications Commission in the name of public service. When the NFL's lawyers shut down the big-screen church parties to protect their Nielsen ratings -- because the league just doesn't make enough money -- the outcry didn't extend beyond talk radio.Former Senate majority leader George Mitchell put heat on baseball officials last week, saying that Congress could intervene if they do not cooperate fully with his investigation of steroid use in the sport. Revelations of steroid use among NFL players -- including the late Lyle Alzado, who was destroyed by the syringe -- are discussed and then forgotten. Suspected drug use has prevented Mark McGwire's election to baseball's Hall of Fame and turned Marion Jones and Barry Bonds into pariahs; a positive test did not prevent Merriman from a Pro Bowl payday, nor did multiple drug charges prevent Michael Irvin from being elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.The NFL is remarkably adept at heading off criticism. ESPN has reported that the league might bar players who fail drug tests from appearing in future Pro Bowls, news that came about a week after the NFL unveiled a tougher drug policy. By being proactive, the NFL suits create the perception that they are serious about these problems without going far enough to solve them.Baseball has contributed to the extra scrutiny it receives. Its antitrust exemption invites government intervention, and its self-promotion as American cultural institution puts it on a moral pedestal.The NFL is the athletic equivalent of Wal-Mart. Its ethics might trouble us sometimes, but that isn't enough to make millions of us stop buying what it sells. It plays straight to our sporting id, to our irresistible craving for the visceral and violent.Perhaps we don't expect such a game to have a conscience. Perhaps, for the good of both athletes and fans, we should.</div>
It's well written but old news. We already know the NFL treats its players like crap..... :whistling:
