After a long, eventful week in the NFL news world—which, unfortunately featured more domestic violence-related stories rather than the action taking place on the field—fans were hoping Friday would be light on the DV news front.
But that wasn’t the case. The White House reportedly decided to weigh in about the league’s domestic violence issue early Friday morning. They said the NFL needs to “get a handle on” its issues with domestic violence, according to a recent report from CBS Sports’ Will Brinson.
A White House official went into detail about why the NFL is ‘obligated’ to discipline domestic violence offenders.
“The NFL has an obligation not only to their fans but to the American people to properly discipline anyone involved in domestic violence or child abuse and more broadly, gain control of the situation,” a White House official said.
“Many of these professional athletes are marketed as role models to young people and so their behavior does have the potential to influence these young people, and it’s one of the many reasons it’s important that the league get a handle on this and have a zero tolerance.”
This seems a bit extreme, and you’d think White House officials would have more pressing issues to deal with. The Twitterverse seems to agree.
Really necessary for sr. White House official to be on background while stating NFL should do more on dom. violence? http://t.co/9Umm26dGT6
— Frank Washkuch (@Washkuch) September 19, 2014
This is likely the direct result of a week that featured more news about Ray Rice, Greg Hardy, Adrian Peterson, Jonathan Dwyer, and even Ray McDonald than the other 27 other teams in the league combined that are not dealing with domestic violence situations.
The White House is reportedly in the process of launching a new campaign—”It’s On Us”—which will “fundamentally shift the way we think about sexual assault.” So it’s certainly plausible that they’re trying to send a message by weighing in on a big issue that has been trending and drawing a lot of reaction from the public this week.
No matter the reason, this puts even more pressure on the league office to lay the hammer down on domestic violence incidents now and in the future.