I give exactly three fucks about football: (1) one Cowboys game a year, (2) Texas/OU, and (3) the Superbowl – but only for the food.

So, that’s why this whole player abusing his wife story is pretty new to me. I missed it, because, I miss most things about football, by choice. I wish I hadn’t missed it though, because this whole situation seems to be a giant case of mismanagement and horribles. 

Basic thoughts:

(1) Violence against your partner is not ok. (Caveat: if you are defending yourself against violence by your partner, by all means, defend yourself.) It is not ok for men to hit women, and it is not ok for women to hit men, it is not ok for women to hit women, and it is not ok for men to hit men. 

(2) Yes, men suffer abuse too. Stop dismissing that reality. I’m looking at you media, and your slight or nonexistent mentions of male victims of domestic violence.

(3) Victims stay with their abusers for a variety of reasons. If you’re part of the situation, you may understand the complexities of it, if you’re not, you probably don’t. The #whyistay conversation is amazingly powerful. 

(4) It seems that the USA as a country still have a lot of people who hold the belief that domestic violence is a personal matter. I worked with a client who didn’t report her abuse in the US because when you reported an issue in her home country you were turned away. Her counselor had convinced her that that wouldn’t happen here. Sometimes, I’m not so sure.

(5) NFL – you screwed up when you only suspended the player for two games.  Violence is violence, it shouldn’t make a difference if you say you didn’t have the full video, you publicly had a partial video account of the incident. The actions of this week were pretty obvious CYA even before the news came out that you had the whole video when you made the original disciplinary call.