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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jaybadger82" data-source="post: 458276" data-attributes="member: 6211">Well, we have a criminal justice system to deal directly with crimes like aggravated assault and the NFL may further sanction a player for such arrests (subject to the terms of its collective bargaining agreement). I guess I don't see "the problem." I understand the popular perception of a problem because the arrest of a high profile athlete always makes headlines. You're not reading about the hundreds of NFL players that conduct themselves without incident. Moreover, these are often big, intimidating men that play a violent sport. Some folks are quick to label such men "thugs" at the drop of a hat and there are rather obvious racial undertones here as well... I believe that the violent crime rate amongst professional athletes is much lower than that for the comparable population. There isn't a ton of scholarly research on the subject but what I've found seems to support this. A 1999 study by Alfred Blumstein and Jeff Benedict is the most concise. A .pdf is available for download from the University of Wisconsin <a href="http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~zzeng/soc357/NFLviolence.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>. Since I don't see a pressing need to address a largely imagined "problem," I guess that makes me part of the "do nothing crowd."</blockquote>

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