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MINNEAPOLIS… Imagine it is 2021, on a beautiful fall Sunday, and you are outside of the Minnesota Vikings’ new digs in Minneapolis. Game time is in a couple of hours and you wanted to get there early to get a glimpse of your favorite players. Up the street you see four motor coach buses approaching. Bus number one stops, the door opens, and several big men in suits and ties exit and head into the players’ entrance to the stadium. The same occurs with buses two and three.

And then bus number four pulls up. It is quite different from the first three, not as colorful or as polished. Those first three would be awesome for cross-country travel. Nice, new, and all decked out. Bus number four, though, pulls up and stops, the door opens, and out comes a security guard. This bus has bars on the windows, the driver’s area is actually a cage, and when the guys inside get out, they are fairly large men, too, but they are in orange jumpsuits and wearing handcuffs. They too head into the players’ entrance.

Wait! Who in the H-E-double hockey sticks are these guys? Well, these are rostered players out on a day pass from lockup so they can play in Sunday’s game! Okay, okay. Not true. I’m just kidding. Or am I? Is this where the league is headed for somewhere down the road?

Before game two, the incorrigible Vikings suspended Adrian Peterson after he was indicted on child abuse charges. They then played the Patriots and lost. Monday the hand-wringing Wilf family, owners of the team, reinstated him after “much debate.” Let me interject here that that debate may have included AP’s lawyer telling the club that since his guy had yet to be convicted of anything, they had better reinstate him lest legal action be pursued. At that point the Wilfs may have caved and then made their move. That is a consideration. Plus, they are not too good without AP.

Then, along with the AP case and a few other domestic abuse matters unfolding, some league sponsors and the public went into full flip-out mode. The team then found their magical solution in some lame thing called the “commissioner’s exempt list,” and AP was back on the outside looking in. The Wilfs were relieved.

To say that Commissioner Roger Goodell was the most recent Deer in the Headlights Award winner would be an understatement. He bumbled his way through a press conference on Friday that left media and fans alike shaking their heads at his pathetic performance. He appears to not have a clue about the gravity of the league’s employees’ poor behavior. As I opined last week, the league has turned a blind eye to player problems for a long time. Is this going to be a crossroads for them? As all empires eventually fall, is this a possible Waterloo for the NFL? When sponsors threaten to pull money, that’s a serious challenge to any billionaire, anywhere. They are all about money.

Then I saw an eye-opener of an article on Friday eve. The Vikings lead the league in player arrests. Since 2000 the club has had 45 player arrests, more than any other team in the league. Cincinnati and Denver were next up. The article suggested that a team’s culture could be a factor in this statistic, in that top management isn’t clear about personal conduct when with the team and when not. Then I considered the possibility of fan expectations being too high.

Let’s have a “be real” moment here. Many of the league’s players come from less than attractive circumstances. Real poverty. I mean real destitute poverty. If you haven’t seen it, consider yourself lucky. Crime-ridden, gang-infested neighborhoods with unimaginable urban blight, or the worst rural poverty you can contemplate. I missed a freeway exit in downtown St. Louis last spring, and where I ended up was about as big of an eye-opener as I had ever had in my life. I could not believe or comprehend what I was seeing. It wasn’t long after daybreak, so there weren’t many people out and about. I can’t say I would have felt safe if there were. On the other hand, I wanted to go back with a camera in the future for a photojournalism opportunity. I could walk to the Rams’ stadium from there. People should see this and demand better.

The inhabitants of these areas are inter-generational, genetically ingrained ethnic citizens of a country that by and large has had one set of life opportunities for one race, and another finite set of life opportunities for other ethnicities—or no opportunity at all. Should we be surprised at the results? Fame and fortune won’t change behavior. It can’t alter life influencers and conditioned behavior. Fans stereotype these players without any understanding of where it comes from or why. And only once in a while, in the most disgusting sets of circumstances, is there any fan outrage. The fans are enablers. But we live in a society with a lot of barkers and not enough biters. I’m guilty, too, and I will at least be honest enough to say so.

In fact, this current malaise will blow over, and soon. It will all revert back until the next occurrence of deplorable behavior, when the cycle will start over. There will be suspensions, Roger will have another lame presser, and blah, blah, blah. Until we decide to treat the disease that creates these situations, we are kidding ourselves. Do you want the NFL to actually BE what they say they are and stand for? Then you need to become an activist and actually do something. Did you witness how fast the league jumped out of their chairs when something they coveted (money) was about to come under siege?

That’s what it takes. Identify the problem. Identify something the problem covets and then threaten that something. And then the action takers will take action. Are we ever going to have an idyllic society here? No. But if we could extract our craniums from our posteriors for a while and get busy, we could create a society that gets us closer to that, rather than farther from it. The biggest, fastest, strongest, and toughest athletes come from some pretty crappy places right here in our country. We feign dismay when they act up while under our microscope. Wake, up fans: most of you really don’t have the right to get upset… PEACE

Marc Elliott is a sports opinion writer who splits his time between Minnesota and his hometown in Illinois.