The start of the Bears season in Chicago was exciting when I was younger.
I can't remember a time when Walter Payton dragged huge men with him as he tried to get to the goal line.
The 1985 Bears, the Sunday afternoon watch parties and long car rides home from gymnastics meets and soccer matches were just some of the things I remember from when I was younger. The Bears were the team in my town.
I look forward to the football season with both excitement and dread. There is nothing like the magic weeks when our team is in the playoffs. It is also the time when I am reminded of what a large portion of the American public thinks of women, and what our lives and well-being are worth.
Al Michaels summarized Antonio Brown's history, which includes sexual assault and sexual misconduct allegations, in the first 15 minutes of the first Thursday Night Football broadcast. While the police and his children watched, he threw furniture off his 14th-floor balcony, narrowly missing a small child. That gaff was followed by a glowing report by a woman who said that Tom Brady was a good friend to Antonio Brown. The fact that Brown had settled a lawsuit accusing him of a violent sexual assault was never mentioned.
It felt like a hard slap in the face to female fans when we learned that Brown was still playing in the NFL as of Sunday. It was an insult to the fans of the National Football League to see them come to the conclusion that Brown was a problem because he stripped off his shirt and ran around the end zone. The allegations that he threw a friend down on the bed and raped her are not the video of him hitting the mother of his children. Fans turned on him because he quit on his team.
If I didn't mention the fact that Brown has been violent toward women because of the hit Vontaze Burfict put on him in 2016 I would be wrong. It would be foolish to assume that any football player is not suffering from head trauma, but it is ridiculous to think that Brown is not responsible for the women he has harmed. I have heard men claim that O.J. Simpson killed Nicole Brown Simpson because of his chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Simpson has a large following on the micro-blogging site. Tell me more about how men's lives are ruined by allegations of violence against women.
The narrative immediately after Brown left the stadium was that he needs help. I never heard any of the talking heads or Tom Brady express sympathy for any of Brown's victims. When it comes to the NFL, the women that leave in their wake are unimportant. It is hard for me to believe that Brady, et al have the same level of compassion and concern for mental health when they see someone's mugshot on TV, because their average run-of-the-mill rapist or abuser can't help you.
I was hoping someone in the media would ask Tom Brady or Bruce Arians if they had anything to say to the victims of Brown. Brady brought the man into his home because his wife and daughter lived there. For someone to ask how he could claim to be an advocate for the women on his staff while still employing Brown. The questions never came. They never do.
Try pointing out the NFL's lip service to combatting domestic violence and sexual assault on social media. Those of us who speak out often about athletes who are violent to women end up with threats and insults in our messages, because how dare we criticize a guy who is really good at football, when it was probably some gold-digging who is trying to steal his. A few men like to jump into our mentions with misogynist abuse. It is many men.
We don't have to say anything controversial to get dragged by men. Mina Kimes shared a message on Sunday.
It is easy to laugh at how ridiculous Charles Brown is, but he was dragged on to the internet for being a troll. Women in sports media get a lot of messages like this on a regular basis. I get more of them during the football season. The way the game is presented by the league and the partners that allow horrible men to let loose on women is something that is hyper-masculine. They do.
She is correct. It never stops.
The broadcast crew of Monday Night Football twisted themselves into pretzels to avoid mentioning that Ben Roethlisberger has been accused of rape by multiple women and was suspended by the league because of his disgusting behavior. Unless you go to the internet, you won't find out about Roethlisberger's past, because the NFL and ESPN won't bring it up.
Some men like to bring up the fact that Brown and Roethlisberger weren't charged for harming women, but it's likely because they're pro athletes. There is no evidence that the allegations are false. The power differential between a star athlete and his team is an example of this. It shows that women are second-class citizens in our society.
I didn't intend for this column to be a scream against the NFL, but as much as I love football, it's hard not to conclude that the league is toxic to women. Does it make die-hard fans more aggressive with women they encounter online? The anecdotal evidence is hard to ignore.
I have said many times before that women make up almost half of the fan base. The league would be falling over backwards courting them, like they have done with casual sports bettors. I am not sure why the league hasn't made any effort with women, other than they don't have to. The women outside M&T Bank Stadium wore Ray Rice jerseys just days after the video of him knocking out his wife in an elevator went public. We may have come to accept that things will never get better. Maybe we internalize societal misogyny to the point where we don't notice it anymore. Maybe we are as bad as the men who just want to watch football.
Imagine if 47 percent of the fan base wanted the NFL to do better.
