Ray Lewis: No NFL Season Would Cause A Crime Wave

Added on May 23, 2011 by Jack Thurman in

NFL

If this type of carnage resulted from the cancellation of an Aussie Rules season, Americans should be very afraid

I’ve always liked Ray Lewis as a player, but based on his recent comments he’s not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer…er….not exactly a serious thinking man. Like many NFL players, Lewis is trying to do his part to give the players the moral high ground during labor negotiations. No problem there, but he might want to try thinking through his comments before he opens his mouth.

Lewis’ addition to the players v. management labor discussion is the prediction of a Road Warrior like post apocalyptic lawless society if there’s no NFL football this fall:

“Do this research if we don’t have a season — watch how much evil, which we call crime, watch how much crime picks up, if you take away our game.”

“There’s too many people that live through us, people live through us. Yeah, walk in the streets, the way I walk the streets, and I’m not talking about the people you see all the time.”

Asked to give the causal reasoning behind his people – football = crime equation Lewis curiously responded: “There’s nothing else to do.”

One interpretation is that Lewis was talking about more crime among NFL players, but that would make his statement more of a threat than a sociological thesis and threats aren’t good for the image of the NFL Players Association. That leaves us to assume that he’s talking about the broader population.

First of all, a serious researcher like Lewis is no doubt aware that violent crime in the United States has nosedived for several years now. Not even one of the more serious economic downturns of the 20th century prompted a significant jump in crime rates. In fact the most recent report by the FBI of violent crime rates showed a 5.5% drop nationwide.

There are no doubt people that would miss the game and certainly some that would miss it a lot. But we’re thinking that Lewis has a serious case of myopia–if not megalomania–if he thinks that the very fabric of our civilization hangs in the balance over NFL football games. Were that the case even a garden variety offseason would be a bloodbath with chaos in the streets and dead bodies littering cities across America. At least in the places I’ve been this summer, it’s been fairly calm.