It clearly shouldn’t have taken this long, but at least once the video came out the Kansas City Chiefs didn’t waste much time getting rid of star running back Kareem Hunt, even though it will hurt their (formerly) pretty good chance of reaching the Super Bowl. However, it’s ridiculous that it took so long (the assault happened back in February) for the video to come out. It’s fair to question just how hard the NFL, or even the Chiefs (btw — my dream Super Bowl for 50+ years has been Kansas City vs. Chicago because they’re my two favorite teams. Either way I’d win) tried to get hold of the hotel surveillance video of the attack.
Now let’s face it — it’s been a whirlwind week of news and even before that it’s been a helluva year in politics and world affairs. Still, day to day life goes on and while there are good things that happen to both regular folks and famous folks in daily living, a lot of ugly stuff happens too. Violence against women isn’t new. It happens countless times every day and sadly it only tends to get discussion when someone famous is involved as is the case here. I mentioned it’s been quite the week in political news but in the rest of life , during the past week the NFL had already gotten embroiled in yet another case of a player physically attacking a woman when the Washington Redskins were the only team to claim a jerk off waivers from the San Francisco Forty-Niners who’d been accused of domestic assault. For those who follow sports and football after the Ray Rice incident the NFL promised to put in reforms but they’ve been somewhat less than sure footed and even handed when it comes to disciplining players over assaulting women.
But let’s talk about the case at hand. Kareem Hunt is young and was already a rising star not just for the Chiefs but for the NFL. He’s a key part of the Chief’s (who are undergoing their best season in a long time — a legitimate Super Bowl contender) offense. While quarterback Patrick Mahomes gets most of the ink for his incredible play made all the more impressive because it’s his first year as a starter the fact is that the running threat Hunt presents keeps defenses honest and allows Mahomes to throw all those touchdown passes. Will the Chiefs still be good and perhaps very good with Hunt gone? Yes. However anyone thinking their post season (especially Super Bowl chances) haven’t been badly damaged is kidding themselves.
So the Chiefs did the right thing (despite the cost to their post season hopes) and quickly & without first trying to spin the matter when the video came out. Or did they do it quickly? Why did it take so long for that video to become public? The Chief’s statement about Hunt’s release was short, and noted that they’d talked to Hunt about the then alleged assault (as did the NFL) and he’d lied to them but now they knew the truth so they cut him loose rather than have someone like that wear their uniform. I hate to say it about a favorite team but I don’t think they tried nearly hard enough to get at the truth to begin with. Echoes of “I asked him and he strongly denied it” are ringing in my head. I can’t help but think they passed the buck to the NFL, and the NFL didn’t try very hard to get to the truth either.
Again I’ll note this assault in the hallway of a Cleveland hotel happened back in February. The police made no arrests at the time. Frankly, after viewing the video of the assault itself and the additional videos TMZ included in their story I don’t think the Cleveland police tried all that hard to make an assault case either. But the NFL? With all their resources? Mike Freeman of Bleacher Report has a great write up of this in which he makes the following comment:
"The NFL's investigation, which began immediately following the incident in February," the league's statement read in part, "will include a review of the new information that was made public today."
New information? That's what we're supposed to believe this was?
This isn't to allege a cover-up happened or was attempted. We don't know that. We may never know that.
What we do know is the NFL utilizes a private army full of ex-cops, FBI agents and former investigators. The league could find a tick on Vladimir Putin's dog's ass while the dog was in Moscow and it was in New York.
And yet TMZ could get this tape but a billion-dollar league couldn't?
The NFL claims it tried to obtain the video but couldn’t. They said the hotel claimed it could only be given to law enforcement, and law enforcement said “the investigation is ongoing” and so on and so forth. I call bullshit. And on the Chief’s too for sitting back and letting the NFL just meander along instead of bringing the considerable resources it has to bear. As for the police in Cleveland, I can’t help but wonder whether there are complaints “being investigated” by Brown’s players (or their other pro sports franchises) and they have been slow walking this matter (even though there was video clearly showing sustained assault with plenty of witnesses) because they don’t want Hunt’s people/lawyers digging up dirt on Cleveland players that’s been kept under the wraps. Freeman concludes his Bleacher Report article with this:
“But it is totally fair to wonder if the NFL didn't want to find a video. The league's history has lost it the benefit of the doubt on that. It's fair to wonder if it just wanted to believe Hunt—and did and then called off its search for any other documenting evidence. (We have seen where NFL teams and the league ignored a cache of indicators and still moved forward with signing a player who had committed domestic violence because of his talent. The Chiefs, in fact, did this by signing wide receiver Tyreek Hill.)”
Will we ever know the whole story, as in everything that led up to Hunt following the woman down the hall from his room and around the corner before the assault began? I doubt it. She says he initially got upset because she wouldn’t “hook up” with one of his friends & wanted to go home. His friends seem to give a different account and say she called him the N-word. It’s an ugly thing to call someone, and if she did (Who knows? Maybe she did and maybe his pals are covering for him to give him an excuse) I sure as hell don’t condone it but if she said something racist & left his room he could have just called her a racist asshole as she headed out the door (and I wouldn’t fault him one bit) and left it at that. One thing that it seems everyone agrees on is that nothing got physical until Hunt followed her down the hall and around the corner. Also, the video shows she didn’t hit him until after he started his attack on her. She wasn’t the only one he hit or kicked either. He slung other people aside including another woman who was trying to break things up.
Had TMZ not managed to obtain and make public the video Hunt would be preparing to play professional football at a nice, fat salary tomorrow. They obtained the video (just as they did with Ray Rice) but hell, the NFL has resources far beyond theirs — what Freeman says in the first blocked quote about the NFL having a private army of ex cops, FBI Agents and investigators isn’t hyperbole. The Chiefs should also have pressed the NFL on the status of their (the NFL’s) “investigation” much more than they did. If they pressed the NFL at all.
Some credit is due to the Chiefs for swiftly (within hours) of this breaking releasing Hunt. But let’s not go giving them too much credit. It’s a sad state of affairs when it’s news that a pro sports franchise doesn’t spend days or weeks trying to spin something like this and just quickly admits something along the lines of “We heard about this; We asked the NFL to investigate to obtain all the facts. We directly asked him about it ourselves — and it turns out he lied to our faces. So we’re done with him — if the doorknob hit him in the ass we don’t care.” I also don’t give Kareem Hunt (the original founder of the franchise was Lamar Hunt and one of his heirs now runs it — makes things confusing when reading the various public statements) much credit for offering an actual apology instead of one of those classic “non apology apologies.” He straight up admitted he did something he shouldn’t have done and said he was sorry. But he SHOULD have done that back in February. The fact he waited until the appalling video proof of his assault came out nine months later tells me he had been hoping the whole thing would stay under the rug where it had been swept.
So what are we left with? Yet another big name athlete doing something awful and most of the time their awful behavior involves physical or sexual assaults against women. And even when video proof of their behavior is readily available (how long would it have taken Cleveland police to obtain a search warrant if the hotel had required them to? Not long) local police, the franchise (or college, or even high school) they play for tries to slow walk the matter in the hopes of covering it up. And we have in this case the NFL which has long had a problem and made a big fuss about fixing it with this issue also not doing what it could have and should have done.
Bad as all that is it’s not the worst part. This kind of violence against women happens countless times around the country every single day. And it often happens in public places where some business often has video surveillance. Even when it’s reported, it too often goes unpunished even if there’s a real, objective investigation. That’s especially true if the man committing the assault is well off financially or well connected or both. If the victim is in some type of relationship with her attacker, just as too often happens with sexual assault attempts will be made to shame her into silence.
My mom died not long after I turned 18 so I still had my hair but if I’d ever treated a woman that way she’d have hauled off and knocked me bald. And though she’s dead and gone a part of me believes somehow some part of her is out there in karma land and would find someone to whip my ass if I treated a woman, or anyone vulnerable (even with my disability I’m still big and still fairly strong — in the upper body at least) like Hunt did & for the life of me I can’t understand why more guys weren’t raised the same way. It wasn’t all that complicated how I was raised. Don’t hit or abuse women, or kids or even other guys if you’re bigger or more powerful. Even if they can fight back walk away if you can. Simple and to the point.
Of course, the rational part of me knows that many moms are themselves browbeaten or physically abused by fathers while growing up and then by husbands or boyfriends they’ve had children with. They need help in teaching their sons how to break the cycle and their daughters that they deserve better and don’t have to settle for such a man when they grow up — maybe some friend(s) who can set a better example although I realize even that is complicated. I don’t have any big answer, but somehow we need to do better.
One thing I do know for sure is that people in positions of fame have to either set a good example — or swiftly and without exception be made an example of.