Where’s the next video? When was the last incident the NFL didn’t follow up on? What’s going to surface next?
Those are the questions the public is asking in the wake of yet another very bad week for the NFL when it comes to the issue of domestic violence by the league’s players.
That’s a lousy position in which to put the roughly 1,700 men playing on NFL rosters. The vast majority of them are good citizens who contribute to their community, don’t hit women and don’t commit criminal acts.
And it’s an even more distressing situation for victims. The NFL’s approach and the individual teams’ strategies place women who suffer domestic assault in an untenable position. They can be almost assured that nothing will be done, except to have their names and reputations ruined. It’s an effective way to suppress reporting.
This is what the NFL has wrought. The league has broken the public trust, again and again, bungling and burying incidents in hopes they all will go away.
They won’t. Last week showed that.
Kareem Hunt was released by the Kansas City Chiefs on Saturday after video, obtained by TMZ, surfaced of him pushing and kicking a 19-year-old woman at a Cleveland hotel in February.
The event bookended a week that started the previous Sunday when the 49ers released Reuben Foster after his second arrest for domestic assault in the past 10 months.
Foster was picked up almost immediately by Washington. Doug Williams, the team’s senior vice president of player personnel, severely damaged his reputation by calling Foster’s arrest “small potatoes” and saying the “high risk was the beat-up that we’re going to take from the PR standpoint.” Williams had to apologize for his tone-deaf interview.
The fallout in Washington, D.C., over the signing might give pause to other teams around the league. As of Monday afternoon, Hunt cleared waivers without a team signing him. Hunt is a free agent. Like Foster, he remains on the commissioner’s exempt list if he is signed by another team, meaning he won’t be able to practice or play. Hunt is only 23, in his prime, and a major factor in the Chiefs’ remarkable season. He likely will be picked up by another team at some point, with lots of big words about how the team will support him.
Kansas City, in a season with realistic Super Bowl aspirations, cut Hunt within hours of the video surfacing. The Chiefs received praise for that, but this is also a team that employs Tyreek Hill, who was kicked off the Oklahoma State team after his pregnant girlfriend told police he had choked and punched her. Hill pleaded guilty to domestic assault and battery by strangulation and was sentenced to three years’ probation. He was on probation when the Chiefs drafted him in 2016. There was no video of that incident.
The NFL completely botched the Hunt investigation, not interviewing the running back, not interviewing the victim and not obtaining the video. This is a league that has millions of dollars at its disposal, employs a slew of investigators and spent countless hours and money investigating the air pressure of footballs, yet couldn’t do its due diligence in this domestic-assault case. Instead, it was — once again — upstaged by TMZ.
This incident came four years after Robert Mueller’s follow-up investigation of the Ray Rice assault. After video surfaced of Rice knocking out his fiancee in an elevator, Mueller outlined all the ways the NFL failed to thoroughly investigate that repellent chapter.
In the wake of the report, the league took moves to strengthen its investigation unit. A lot of good that did. The NFL continues to make its priorities clear: Let the best players stay on the field no matter what they do off the field.
In an attempt at damage control, Hunt requested and received an ESPN interview. His interaction with ESPN’s Lisa Salters might have done more damage. Hunt seemed to be reciting talking points, saying over and over, “I’m not that type of person. … That’s not me.” Um, yes, it is. Inebriated or not, which he apparently was, he is that type of person and needs some serious counseling.
“I apologize to everyone: my family, the Chiefs and close friends,” Hunt said.
Hmm, who was missing in that list?
The victim inevitably is minimized in these incidents. The Chiefs said Hunt was released, not because he put his hands on a woman, but because he was “not truthful” with the team. Remember: The NFL didn’t talk to the woman in the Hunt incident. Williams called Foster’s assault charges “small potatoes.”
The endgame, it seems, is not justice or holding perpetrators accountable or keeping communities safe. It is hoping there isn’t video, hoping law enforcement looks the other way, hoping things can be settled quietly, and hoping that accusers go away. In other words, follow the Ben Roethlisberger model: The Pittsburgh quarterback was twice accused of rape, settled one claim out of court and saw the other go away. He is now held up as a great family man and elder statesman. And he is probably greatly relieved that his accusations came in the days before there was video of virtually everything and rampant social media to keep stories alive.
The issue isn’t a problem for just the NFL. Domestic violence is an issue throughout sports. But it is the NFL that pays lip service to the problem, that has had the most public incidents. The NFL is a multibillion-dollar industry but can’t seem to make domestic-violence training, education or investigation a real priority.
So, we’re left wondering when the next video will surface, when the next incident will take place.
Ann Killion is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: akillion@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @annkillion