Life Ain't Easy for a Boy Named Suh

My otherwise bucolic Thanksgiving Day holiday was viciously punctuated by the actions of one of the players on the Detroit Lions football team. In Football-onia, it is the tradition to have the Lions and, usually, the Packers play on Thanksgiving Day; this tradition goes back quite some time. Indeed, it goes back to a time where such actions as I, and millions of others, witnessed might not have brought much more than, perhaps, a penalty. Those were the days when "piling on" was punishable by penalty but not "roughing the passer." If you saw the game, then you know that Suh, after having tackled the opponent, began banging his head on the turf and, when pulled off, stomped the arm of his opponent who was still lying on the ground. Just so you know, this is not a rant about how violent football is or anything like that; it is, however, a comment that takes pointed aim at how certain vocations unwittingly play into the hands of human temperament.

What I mean by this is that certain vocations seem to attract a cadre of individuals who have a temperament for that vocation that is eerily compatible with the vocation's demands. Take, for instance, the fact that police departments around the country are populated by ex-military people. Football, and other sports, seem to straddle the line because there are often people with violent tempers that take up tennis and very often "gentler, kinder" people who find themselves strangely talented for football.

I do not believe that there is anything inherent about any particular sport that makes it either violent or non-violent; I do, however, believe that individuals who have not had adequate expression of their temperament so that they could find a peaceful balance and harmony within themselves, seek out "benign" or "approved" ways of expressing that temperament. In this way, they get to express themselves in a way that is "hidden." What is unique about Thursday's performance by Suh is that his expressing was caught on camera and broadcast to the nation. He then had the temerity to say that he was just "catching his balance."

As of this writing, Suh has not received any punishment from the NFL and I don't really expect him to get much beyond, perhaps, a two game suspension; and that, despite the fact that he is a repeat offender. Situations like this are really quite difficult because, on the one hand, he could be rehabilitated if he could ever "get it all out" in a safe way--that is, safe for him and others; on the other hand, football is not that place and how do we send that message in a way that it can be "heard," "understood," and "complied with"?

Suh's actions were deliberate and vicious and he thinks it was ok to act like that; unless the NFL sends a serious "wake-up call" to Suh, we will see this behavior again, perhaps from even more individuals who think that they make enough money to be able to "afford" whatever penalty the NFL imposes. The athletes that act in this way do so on the basis of an economic calculation; they determine that they can "afford" to act the way they act because it wont "cost" them that much and they are willing to "pay" because getting to "express" whatever is bothering them is more valuable than what it would "cost" them.

Is a pre-signing psychiatric evaluation an option? Rumor has it that Suh will have to take "anger management" courses; that seems "too little, too late." The main concern for me is that there has been precious little said about what the coach should do; everyone seems to be waiting on the NFL to act. In my estimation, the coach is more to blame for his silence...and...here...the silence is the same deafening silence that we heard at Penn State. What is it that the coach is getting out of all of this; whatever it is, on Thursday it wasn't a win.