Domestic violence is becoming more relevant today in sports. Yet, some of the top leagues today don’t have a policy in place for these cases. Only the NFL and NBA have a policy in place for domestic violence, MLB and NHL do not. Most cases have even become rather inconsistent in terms of how the league has suspended the players committing the crime. What do these policies have set for the suspension of these players and what do the leagues that don’t have policies do regarding these cases? This paper will discuss these policies, the lack of consistency, and the future. Recent criticism over Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice’s domestic violence case has caused the NFL to implement a new policy regarding domestic violence. The policy
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It is really hard for a league commissioner to see these reports and tell be able to tell if the player is innocent or not. But, how can the league allow the player to play for allegedly committing the crime and the charges get dropped because of un-cooperation of the victim? The league needs to sit down and come up with a new agreement of action against these crimes. Since most of the power for these disciplinary actions comes down from the commissioner, then the agreement would most likely involve a downgrade in the commissioner’s authority regarding certain decisions over the players (Mandell). The NBA noted that it had its own difficulties off the court and continue to look for improvement for these issues. They also see everything that happened with Ray Rice and are following it in hopes to learn something to imply to their own league issues (Mahoney). MLB and NHL have yet to move from a case-to-case basis. However, MLB’s commissioner was asked about baseball’s policy handling domestic violence, he stated that the player’s union and league discussed the idea of a policy but opted to stay on a case-by-case basis (Brock and Kiriakos). The NHL has fewer player arrests than the other three sports of Americas Big Four. It also the least popular, meaning that some of these incidents fly under the
It is really hard for a league commissioner to see these reports and tell be able to tell if the player is innocent or not. But, how can the league allow the player to play for allegedly committing the crime and the charges get dropped because of un-cooperation of the victim? The league needs to sit down and come up with a new agreement of action against these crimes. Since most of the power for these disciplinary actions comes down from the commissioner, then the agreement would most likely involve a downgrade in the commissioner’s authority regarding certain decisions over the players (Mandell). The NBA noted that it had its own difficulties off the court and continue to look for improvement for these issues. They also see everything that happened with Ray Rice and are following it in hopes to learn something to imply to their own league issues (Mahoney). MLB and NHL have yet to move from a case-to-case basis. However, MLB’s commissioner was asked about baseball’s policy handling domestic violence, he stated that the player’s union and league discussed the idea of a policy but opted to stay on a case-by-case basis (Brock and Kiriakos). The NHL has fewer player arrests than the other three sports of Americas Big Four. It also the least popular, meaning that some of these incidents fly under the