Photo credit: thesportsdaily.com

By: Amaury Pi-Gonzalez

The NFL is the second youngest of the four main professional sports leagues in the country. It was founded in 1920.

The NFL is also the richest sports league in the world with revenues above everybody else in the world of sports, and television ratings that beat just about everything that is on television. Not to mention the Super Bowl, which has become the most watched single sporting event on Earth.

Nonetheless, not everything these days is rosy when it comes to the NFL. They still have a problem with players suffering concussions (although the league have worked on the reduction of injuries), changing certain rules on the field to protect players and having a very big domestic violence problem. It seems like every week a player is suspended or fired from his team because he beat his wife or girlfriend. This is a bigger problem than the concussions on the field. Personal responsibility and behavior cannot be controlled by the team because when you take off your uniform and go home or to a bar, you are not playing football, you are just like any regular Joe out there and you are responsible for your action in your community like everybody else.

This past week, Kareem Hunt of the Kansas City Chief and Reuben Foster of the San Francisco 49ers were the latest two players accused of domestic violence and nobody can escape that these days. It goes online and millions of people can see what happened.

There have been protests, mostly fueled by the initial action of ex-49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick to take a knee during the playing of the National Anthem. This action immediately went viral in our social world, left the sports arena and went directly into the political realm. Obviously, this did not help the NFL. Kaepernick lost his job, but it planted the seed for a lot of division among the fans that pay to watch an NFL game. Two things that should unify all of us is the flag and the national anthem, and if we cannot respect that for three minutes, we are in trouble as a country. To the credit of the players association and some owners, these protests also brought more players and owners together in the need to help communities in their respective cities in many social issues–and that is a good thing.

All these problems have spooked a lot of their TV audience and attendance to the games. We live in a different world today, and the NFL better be careful not to continue going down that road, because is not headed to a good place.

A good friend or mine recently told me: “If Kaepernick had been accused of domestic violence, he would probably still be playing in the NFL, but he took a knee and that cost him his career. Yes, it is sarcasm, but it says something about the NFL today. And many people are talking about all these ‘issues.'”

In conclusion, the NFL can do a lot about injures and reduce the concussions in the sport, but the other stuff actually is hard to control. We can protest anything we want, after all this is America, and we have the right under our Constitution. When Kaepernick took his first knee I respected his right to do so, even though I wrote and talked about it. Back then, he was getting paid to play football and he could have called a press conference and said what he what he wanted.

Domestic violence is something that should never be tolerated by the NFL, any other sports franchise or anyplace else. But, then again, this behavior happens usually off the field, so it falls into the category of individual responsibility and accountability. This behavior is in our society, and this is the toughest problem this league has today.