More Talent, More Leeway: Do Violence Against Women Arrests Really Hurt NFL Player Careers?

Abstract

This article examines whether arrests for an act of violence against women have a negative impact on National Football League (NFL) player careers and whether this impact has become more negative over time. Framed by criminological deterrence and conflict theories, I conduct a Bayesian multi-level negative binomial regression on a matched pairs sample of all 117 NFL players arrested for an act of violence against women between 2000 and 2019 ( n = 234). Results show that the effect of an arrest on player careers is negligible, though it has become slightly more detrimental over time. Player value and performance are stronger predictors of post-arrest career trajectories, and average or better performance negates any detrimental impact of an arrest.

The 50 Most Cited Papers Pertaining to American Football: Analysis of Studies From the Past 40 Years

“…Topics of research relating to football are broad, ranging from performance to injury-related topics 4 , 17 , 56 , 107 to social and political issues. 38 , 101 , 103 With such a wide scope of research, it has become difficult to identify the most significant and impactful findings relating to football injuries. Bibliometric analyses provide a way to condense this ever-growing research, as articles with a greater number of citations are often considered the most influential in a field, and bibliometric citation analyses provide quantitative representation of an article’s impact.…”

‘Did the NFL start caring about women a lot more after Ray Rice? Probably not’: White-collar deviance and violence against women in racial capitalist sport

“…Though it is not clear whether athletes commit more acts of violence than those in the general population (Kreager, 2007), male athlete violence, and specifically male sexual and domestic violence against women (hereafter ‘VAW’) frequently makes headlines in sports news (Anderson, 2017). While studies have shown that, contrary to popular belief, the careers of athletes arrested for an act of VAW are not systematically negatively impacted by arrests (Sailofsky, 2023; Sailofsky and Shor, 2022), some accused athletes are released from their employment with an organization, as the team purports to ‘take a stand’ against their violent behaviour. While an optimistic reading of these team decisions might suggest that sport organizations assess the facts of the case and make employment decisions based on whether the player actually engaged in the alleged violent behaviour, a cursory glance at arrested athletes’ careers following arrests reveal that the veracity of the allegation and the harm caused by the alleged behaviour are far from the only factors considered.…”

“…While team decision makers all noted that VAW was unacceptable, and nearly all of them mentioned this type of physical violence when asked about more severe crimes, the actions taken by teams regarding accused players mostly tell a different story (Sailofsky, 2023; Sailofsky and Shor, 2022). If organizations had a zero-tolerance, morality-based policy to criminality or to VAW, the talent and productivity of a player would not have any impact on a player’s evaluation.…”

“…Following this thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006), I used member-checking (Nowell et al, 2017) with five participants to verify my interpretations of their interviews. While it was difficult to confirm the veracity of interviewees’ claims, given that they were discussing conversations and team-specific decision-making processes that happen in private, their claims regarding how much teams (in general) care about athlete allegations of VAW were triangulated with quantitative empirical research on the topic (Sailofsky, 2023; Sailofsky and Shor, 2022).…”

“…However, it is important to be wary of sport organizations potentially engaging in performative capitalism (Lewis, 2020). As discussions of the importance of social issues (like VAW) in sport continue to increase, it is possible that 'expendable' athlete-workers will be the only ones whose careers are impacted by VAW (or other criminal or deviant) allegations (Sailofsky, 2023). The interviews above indicate that this already seems to be the case, as the teams release lower-performing players to 'show' that they care about victims of violence, without negatively impacting the team's performance and the organization's bottom line.…”