Former NFL linebacker Steve Towle (left) of Lee's Summit was placed on probation and fined $125,000 Wedneday for slamming a fellow motorist to the ground in a traffic argument Sept. 7:
- (Victim Rudy) Babbitt, 49, was taken to a hospital, placed on a ventilator and underwent at least two surgeries. He eventually was transferred to a rehabilitation hospital and now is recovering at home.
- Babbitt’s mother, Gladys Babbitt, said he still has a long rehabilitation period ahead. He can’t use his right hand and continues to struggle to speak clearly, she said.
Earlier posts:
Sept. 09 - Don't
call it road rage
Sept. 10 - Road-rage
story make take darker turn
Sept. 13 - Getting
smart about NFL violence
Sept. 14 - Authors:
It's the NFL's fault
Back in September, I interviewed sports-crime expert Jeff Benedict (right), co-author of the 1998 book, Pros and Cons: The Criminals Who Play in the NFL:
Q: Has this problem gotten better, worse or about the same since you wrote your book?
BENEDICT: I have not kept a good pulse on what’s going on in the NFL. I did a book a year or two ago about the same problem in the NBA, so I had some revisits to the NFL then. But I don’t have a real fresh sense of what’s going on right now.
I think I can say generally, though, that there’ve been some things that have improved and some things that haven’t. I’m not in a position to give you a statistical answer as to whether the crime rate has gone up or down since 1998.
What I can say more broadly is that, in general, professional athletes are increasingly finding themselves on the wrong side of police reports despite what I would consider greater scrutiny by the press in their off-the-field behavior.
Conventional wisdom might suggest that with the spotlight on them more – much more than it was in the 1970s, when Roger Staubach played and people didn’t really pay attention to this stuff – nowadays people do pay attention. It’s a subject of enormous interest, and the leagues invest an enormous amount of money and time in trying to do everything they can to prevent players from getting into these situations.
However, it keeps happening over and over again, and the severity of these offenses is rising, not shrinking. So can I tell you it’s 10% higher now than then? No. But if you look at the types of crimes that players are being charged with now, we’re seeing increasingly that they involve more serious instances of violence, use of weapons, sometimes it’s simple things like carrying unlicensed guns, passing through airports that aren’t allowed.
But the point is, I think that the professional sports leagues, particularly the NFL and the NBA, have a lot of work to do with their players.
Q. They haven’t fixed this problem by any stretch of the imagination, it sounds like.
BENEDICT: Well, I wouldn’t say they’ve fixed it, that’s for sure. But I also think you’ve got to give the leagues credit to the extent that they have implemented a lot of programs that are well-intended. I don’t think they’re just designed to present good PR, I think they earnestly have tried, because there’s a business incentive to do this, to try to do everything they can to prevent this stuff from happening.
Unfortunately, you can’t control what these players do 24-7. And a lot of times they are off the field and outside the reach of the coaches and administrators. And these guys get themselves into situations.
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