Consider This from NPR - Punishing Player Misconduct: Will the NFL Ever Get it Right?

Episode Date: December 3, 2022

On Sunday, Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson will return to the field for the first time in nearly two years. This comes after an 11-game suspension and $5 million fine imposed by the NFL after more than two dozen female massage therapists filed allegations against him ranging from sexual misconduct to sexual assault. The allegations stem from incidents that occurred in 2020 and 2021, while Watson was a quarterback for the Houston Texans. And while he doesn't face criminal charges, the sheer number of women coming forward with similar accounts is striking - but not, striking enough to deter Cleveland from signing Watson -in time for the 2022 season -with a five-year $230 million deal The NFL has faced criticism in the past for how it handles cases like Watson's, and many critics say the fine and suspension don't go far enough. Host Michel Martin speaks with Kevin Blackstione, a sports columnist for the Washington Post and ESPN panelist, about how the NFL might better handle allegations of player misconduct against women.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University performs breakthrough research every year, making discoveries that improve human health, combat climate change, and move society forward. More at iu.edu slash forward. My name is Ashley Solis. Remember that name? I am a survivor of assault and harassment. LaShawn Watson is my assaulter and my harasser. In March 2021, Ashley Solis, a licensed massage therapist, filed a lawsuit against NFL player Deshaun Watson. Here's where I want to tell you that in this segment,

there's going to be language pertaining to sexual assault. Solis says that Watson deliberately put his exposed penis on her hand during a massage appointment in 2020, when Watson was a quarterback with the Houston Texans. Solis is one of more than two dozen massage therapists who have described similar encounters with Watson, citing behavior that they say ranges from wildly unprofessional and lewd to coercion and sexual assault. While Watson doesn't face criminal charges, the sheer number of women coming forward with similar accounts is striking, but not apparently striking enough to deter the Cleveland Browns from signing Watson in time for the 2022 season

with a $230 million deal. I understand that you guys have, you know, a lot of questions, but with my legal team and my clinical team, there's only football questions that I can really address at this time. We'll repeat, none of the complaints resulted in criminal charges. Grand juries in two Texas counties declined to issue indictments. But there were other consequences. Along with settlements in 23 out of 24 civil lawsuits, an 11-game suspension and a $5 million fine was imposed

by the NFL for violating their personal conduct policy. That ends Sunday when Watson is expected to return to the field as quarterback for the Cleveland Browns, facing his former team, the Houston Texans. And while the majority of the civil cases are settled, Ashley Solis' case is expected to proceed to trial. What remains unsettled is confidence in how the NFL handles allegations of misconduct or abuse. NPR sports correspondent Tom Goldman spoke about the case. Since the infamous Ray Rice case in 2014 when the former running back punched his fiancée, captured on video, the league has at times bungled its way through these cases. Initially, Watson faced a six-game suspension that was seen by critics as too lenient.

There were calls for a full-season suspension, which the NFL apparently decided was too harsh, ultimately settling on 11 games. Consider this. The NFL just can't seem to win when it faces allegations of assault and misconduct against women. Could that be because the league hasn't been able to face its own role in these cases? The Texans enabled him in a certain way to continue this behavior. That's coming up. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate

with no hidden fees. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education,

democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org. From NPR, I'm Michelle Martin. It's Saturday, December 3rd. I think there's a lot to learn about what consent is, the imbalance of power, how you need to act when you have power, and how you need to be thoughtful of that. Kaylin Kaler covers the NFL for The Athletic and has reported on the Deshaun Watson case, and she says that both Houston and Cleveland bear some responsibility. Houston, in particular, could have done more to stop Watson. They knew. They had some level of

understanding that he was getting himself into situations that were putting his reputation at harm, the team's reputation at harm, the NFL's reputation at harm, and putting women in danger. Kaler says the fact that authorities never found enough evidence to charge Watson criminally may have played a part in how the NFL handled the allegations. But after eight years of reporting on the league, she says she's come to believe that teams often create structures around their star players that embolden them. I've seen teams, by their behavior, just kind of like coddle their players,

particularly the most talented ones, the stars. I've seen that behavior play out where they're coddling them, they're enabling them, they're almost afraid to give them that tough love or to give them the advice that they need. So I'm really not surprised that the Texans did enable Watson in his behavior because that's sort of par for the course with what I've seen from other teams. What, if any, responsibility the league has to guide or police the behavior of their players off the field has been a part of the discussion around the NFL and

other professional sports leagues for some time now. But are there some things that we aren't talking about? The better you become as an athlete, from being a young kid to a teenager to a college superstar and into the pros, you become more and more isolated, I believe, from reality. That's coming up. You know, there is no one storyline. I mean, you know, in part, it's the league's difficulty in dealing with athletes as well as executives and owners who have been accused of sexual assault or sexual harassment. That's the large umbrella over all of this. The smaller bits of it are black men who are portrayed as sexual predators. That's Kevin Blackistone. He's a sports columnist for the Washington Post, a panelist on ESPN, and a professor of journalism at the University of Maryland. I asked him for his take on the Watson case, particularly for

aspects of it that he thinks may have been overlooked or that people just don't want to talk about, which is why he started off by acknowledging that even for the media, these are difficult conversations. It is all very, very painful and unsettling. But what do you do? Does this mean he can no longer play the game of football? Does this mean that any employee anywhere in this country who comes under the same sort of, finds him or herself in the same situation, can no longer be employed, can no longer go to school. It's troubling all the way around. related to the sports world that other people are not. And it seems to me that there are parallel conversations going on about Deshaun Watson and others who have found themselves in similar situations. It seems that on the one hand, there's the polite conversation and there's the accepted conversation, and then there's a whole other conversation that takes place within these worlds that the polite conversation doesn't include.

And one of those less attractive conversations or maybe the sort of the not polite conversation is about the degree to which professional athletes who often are very young and suddenly very rich are the target of a lot of people who want to be around them. And so I just, you know, and I'm just having to ask you about that. This is not to imply that these complainants are not being truthful about their experiences. But it is to say that is there something about the world that these young men are in that allows them to think that this behavior is okay? I think so. The better you become, or oftentimes this is the case, the better you become as an athlete from being a young kid to a teenager to a college superstar and into the pros, you become more and more isolated, I believe, from reality. Your circle becomes tighter. It becomes a circle of people who worship you, who are your yes men

and women. And I do think that that's part of the problem. And can I ask you this? Is this a football problem? Is this a really rich young guy problem? Or is this something else? Well, you know, I don't think it's a football problem. I think he just happens to be a football player. I would say it has to do with masculinity and money because we've seen this happen before with people. I mean, I think about, and this is the criminal side of it, but you think about someone like Bill Cosby. And, you know, many of us wondered the samehaun Watson is when Deshaun Watson came out of college, you know, he was quite polished, you know, clean cut, good looking, well spoken guy. And you talk about talk about not judging a book by its cover.

He had the cover that would make it seem as if this is not something that would even be in the possibility for him. Which is where I think the Cosby analogy comes in, because Cosby, you know, his public reputation, America's dad, the jello pudding guy, lovable, cuddly, it just is so dissonant with that. That's interesting. Do you, part of what, you know, this, you said this is sort of uncomfortable. This whole conversation is a little, not just our conversation, but the whole discussion around Deshaun Watson is uncomfortable. Why is that? I mean, why is that? Is it because he's a black man in a way that black men are continually sort of stereotyped as predatory when other people engage in similar conduct and don't? Or is it just because he's a star? What is it about it that's so uncomfortable? It's also uncomfortable because criminal charges have not been brought against him. And that I believe all but one or two of the 24 or 25 accusers have settled out of court with him. And we know that that doesn't necessarily mean an admission of guilt, but just to make a complaint and go away. But you're saying the sheer volume of complaints

can't be ignored. It can't be ignored. If it were one or two, then you begin to think differently about it. But if it's this many, it's very disturbing. And then the discussions just within the Black community among Black men who are fans of the game and believe that Deshaun Watson has been set up in some way and point to the fact that the accuser's attorney had a relationship with the owner of the Houston, Texas for whom he played and that all of this came up at a time when Deshaun Watson and the owner were at odds over his continued employment in Houston anyway. And I guess that's sort of the ick factor that we talk about. There's the polite conversation and then there's the not polite conversation. And the not polite conversation means is that there are people with motives other than the truth who target some of these men over the years have admitted that they have targeted athletes with money for particular reasons. Absolutely. It goes on. So forgive me, if you could wave a wand, what would have preferred that Deshaun Watson not be allowed to play this season.

I think that that is a penalty that would have brought some measure of comfort to those who wanted the most punitive damages brought against Deshaun Watson. And going forward, I think that the league once again has to look at how it deals with this very sometimes delicate situation. I think what they should do is they should look at corporate America, which they are a huge part of, and see how other corporations deal with this. I think they need to speak with women's groups and crisis centers to see how they deal with this. And so I think that one of the things the league needs to also look at, and I think a lot of us do in whatever walk of life we're in, is try to figure out how we can fix these problems,

how we can help people so that it doesn't happen again, rather than just focus on the punishment. That is Kevin Blackistone. He is a columnist for The Washington Post. He is a panelist on ESPN, and he's a professor of journalism at the University of Maryland. Kevin Blackistone, thank you so much for talking with us and sharing these insights with us. Thank you. It's Consider This from NPR.

I'm Michelle Martin.