(ThyBlackMan.com) Aldon Smith. Jabari Price. Dion Jordan. Antonio Gates. Josh Gordon. Ace Sanders.
What do all of these names have in common? They’re all National Football League players who have either been suspended or outright released from the teams they play for.
Yes, they’re all black and yes, they’re all young.
At first these two factors would appear to be inter-related. Young black athletes being discriminated against by a majority of wealthy white owners is a tragedy waiting to happen.
Or is it?
Today’s NFL is made up of 32 teams, each team being allowed to carry a roster of 53 active players. That means there are 1,696 professional football players, of which close to 70% are black. Of those athletes a little over 23 have either been suspended or released due to some type of rule violation.
Sadly black athletes make up over 90% of violators. At first glance this would appear to illuminate a greater issue, and that is the fact that even in a sport that owes most of its commercial popularity to the black athlete, highly discriminatory workplace practices still exist. 
The media attempts to promote this as evidence of a double standard against black athletes. Never mind that the league has entered into a collective bargaining agreement with the players union who have agreed to the terms of the code of conduct. No, the fact that over 90% of all violators are black is proof that black folks have yet even more evidence of being oppressed.
And while the NFL is clearly no racial utopian vacuum, the fact remains that looking at these same statistics differently shows that only 2% of all the black players are violators. Plainly speaking this means that over 98% of all black players are doing what they’re supposed to do: playing a game that they love within the prescribed boundaries that they’ve agreed to.
If you can boast 98% approval of anything that is a very positive thing. An organization with as many moving parts as the NFL has the right, and duty, to police itself. There have been some very well-publicized “dropped balls” along the way but for the most part the NFL does a great job at handling a bunch of young millionaires with oversized egos.
And this is where the real problem comes in: suddenly coming into a lot of money at a young age.
The vast majority of players in the league are between the ages of 22 to 29 years old. For the majority of their lives they have been engaged in one of the most violent full contact sports of the modern era. Chances are that, along the way, they’ve experienced some form of brain trauma. The area of their brain that is often most often traumatized as a result of tackling collisions is the frontal lobe. Unfortunately it is this same area that is responsible for, among other things, decision making.
Neurologists have determined that the frontal lobe of most people’s brains is not fully developed until the age of 25. So, take a person whose frontal lobe has experienced trauma for many years, combine it with a chemically based inability to make sound decisions and then add a TON of money, and voila! You’ve got yourself an out-of-control physically intimidating man-child. Oh, and for giggles, add an instant entourage of new found associates who all want a seat on the money train and it’s easy to understand what happens next. The party never stops. Given those pressures it is no wonder that making sound decisions that will not negatively affect their future is something that the 2% simply cannot synthesize.
Recently the NFL has had to come to terms with the fact that acute brain damage is one of the only sure things that a veteran has to look forward to. If some of these older players who have endured years of brutal punishment on the football field cannot make sound decisions after that area of their brain has matured, how much less practical is it to expect younger players to make those same decisions? It is not a statement of judgement, but it is a matter of practicality.
Staff Writer; Steven Robinson
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