Despite Aaron Hernandez and other high-profie cases, unclear NFL has actual crime problem

While high-profile crimes by high-profile American football players give the NFL an image problem, it doesn't necessarily look like an epidemic when the numbers get crunched.

Former NFL player Aaron Hernandez listens after he was sentenced to life in prison for murder in Massachusetts on Wednesday. Dominick Reuter / Reuters / April 15, 2015

Murder, rape, domestic violence, weapons charges, drug crime and animal cruelty: National Football League stars past and present have accumulated an ever-lengthening rap sheet over the years.

For some, the murder conviction of former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez on Wednesday confirms the view that American football is the black sheep of professional sport.

Others point to figures that indicate a “crime problem” in the NFL isn’t as clear cut as the stream of lurid headlines suggests. The case of Hernandez, who also faces murder charges for the killing of two men in 2012, is just the latest in a long line to tarnish the image of the NFL.

Former Baltimore Ravens player Ray Lewis was accused of the murder of two men stabbed to death outside a nightclub in 2000 before the charges were dropped when he pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice.

Star running back OJ Simpson was acquitted of the 1994 murder of his ex-wife and her friend and today sits in a Nevada prison after being convicted of armed robbery and kidnapping in 2008.

In 2007, Atlanta Falcons player Michael Vick was sent to prison after pleading guilty to running a dogfighting ring which involved horrific cruelty.

Last year, the NFL was rocked by a scandal after former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice was suspended for punching his then-fiance unconscious in a lift.

The case was the most prominent of several involving domestic violence, and prompted criticism that the sport’s managers were not doing enough to tackle the problem.

Minnesota Vikings star Adrian Peterson was suspended for almost the entirety of the 2014 season after being charged with child abuse for beating his son with a tree branch.

He was later fined and placed on probation after pleading no contest.

Retired 2010 Super Bowl winner Darren Sharper, meanwhile, was jailed earlier this year after admitting multiple counts of rape against women in California, Arizona, Nevada and Louisiana.

So does the NFL have a crime problem? Available statistics suggest it is not that simple.

A database of arrests involving NFL players compiled by USA Today has logged 790 cases dating back to 2000.

Brent Schrotenboer, the journalist who created the database, notes that the overall crime rate is around two per cent, compared with around four per cent for the general population.

“I would not say that the NFL has a crime epidemic as such,” Schrotenboer said, noting that many of the cases involve drunk-driving offences.

“These are young men who like to party and have a lot of money.”

The number of reported cases involving NFL players was also likely to be higher compared to other sports, by virtue of the fact that NFL rosters of between 60-90 players are vastly bigger than baseball and basketball.

Analysis by the statistics-crunching website FiveThirtyEight.com also found that arrest rates among NFL players were low compared to US national averages for men in a similar age range.

Overall, NFL players’ arrest rate was 13 per cent of the national average. Gun-related, non-violent crimes tracked at 45.2 per cent, while sex offences came in at 38.2 per cent of the national average.

Domestic violence scored as the NFL’s worst category, with an arrest rate of 55.4 per cent of the average.

Jeff Benedict, author of the 1998 book Pros and Cons which spotlighted criminal cases in American football, said players accused of crimes are often shaped by their environment before they arrive in the NFL.

Hernandez, who had several run-ins with the law during his college football career at the University of Florida, was typical of the problem.

"It's not often that a player in the NFL just suddenly goes bad one day and goes off the rails," Benedict told the Only A Game programme on the National Public Radio in the US.

While there are many success stories of players from troubled backgrounds who flourish in the NFL, there were many whose fortunes “go south,” Benedict said.

“One of the reasons for that is that the NFL gives these guys three things that are very dangerous. No 1: a lot of money. No 2: a lot of discretionary time, and No 3 an incredible amount of adulation.

“When you put those things together for a guy who has had trouble in the past, that can be a formula for big problems in the NFL.”

The NFL meanwhile has responded to the spate of recent high-profile cases by introducing a tougher personal conduct policy for players.

The new code allows for a mandatory six-game suspension for incidents involving assault, sexual assault, battery, domestic violence and child abuse.

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