It seems every day that another athlete is being arrested for assault. It’s not uncommon for athletes to be aggressive while playing, especially in contact sports like football or hockey. However, some athletes bring violence into other aspects of their life.

Throughout this piece, it is not my intention to make male athletes the bad guys or make them seem overemotional. My point is to show that violence is ingrained in sports, and the way the media and fans. portray that violence and its aftermath only helps to perpetuate a more violent culture of sports – in and outside the game.

Take O.J. Simpson. Even if you don’t believe he killed his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, or his wife’s friend, Ron Goldman, it’s hard to ignore the countless 911 calls his wife made when he was acting violently.

Not much has changed since then. According to Slate, Chiefs player Jovan Belcher shot and killed his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, and then drove to the Chiefs practice field to shoot and kill himself in 2012. Dez Bryant, a former Cowboys player, assaulted his mother. Ray Rice, a former player for the Ravens, was videotaped as he punched and knocked unconscious his then-fiancee, Janay. These are just some of the hundreds of cases of male athletes being violent outside of their sport.

That same article wrote that “of the 32 NFL teams, 21 of them have this year (2012) had at least one player who’s been charged at some point with domestic violence or sexual assault.”

USA Today keeps a database of every arrest made since 2000 of a player from a professional team, including the National Football League. The most recent domestic abuse arrest in the NFL as of Jan. 31 was Xavien Howard, a Dolphins player, Dec. 29, 2019 because he “pushed his fiancee against a wall…she had visible scratches and redness on her arm.”

Domestic violence is a problem that also exists outside of sports culture.

“On average, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States,” says the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

Another problem to look at is how these professional leagues handle violence in their sports. After Giants player Michael Boley was accused of throwing his girlfriend into a wall, Giants General Manager Jerry Reese detracted from the severity of the incident. 

“We don’t condone any kind of domestic violence of any kind in any way,” Reese said. “But Michael Boley does all kinds of community service and people never talk about that.” 

Slate also reports that the then-head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, Jim Harbaugh, was said to have told his players that they could come to him with anything and he’ll forgive them, except for when they’ve abused a woman. However, players of his included Perrish Cox, who was accused of rape, and Ahmad Brooks, who punched a woman in the face.

Even when these athletes go to court, it’s unlikely they will be charged or serve jail time. ESPN writes that Cox was acquitted of the charges that he impregnated a woman while she was passed out. Even DNA tests showing Cox was the father was not enough to convict him. Other players have been sentenced to mandatory community service, house arrest, small fines and other grossly small punishments compared to the pain they have inflicted on others.

There is another part of this violence in sports that must be addressed: the way men and women are portrayed when they act “emotional” or “violent.” Often when a male athlete shoves another player, or a male coach yells at a referee, nobody bats an eye because it is so common to see male athletes and coaches exhibit this behavior. However, when a female athlete or coach acts in those same ways, she is criticized.

At the 2018 U.S. Women’s Open, Serena Williams received three code violations: one for coaching, one for racket abuse and one for verbal abuse towards the umpire, which ultimately ended in her opponent, Naomi Osaka, winning automatically, writes ESPN. The first violation was what started all this, as Williams’ coach made a hand motion that the umpire took as a coaching signal, which is not allowed. Most of her violations in this game had to do with defending herself because she felt unfairly treated, and in the sports world, it is not uncommon to argue with the referees.

Headlines afterward read “Serena Williams’ temper is building ugly US Open legacy,” and “Serena Williams blows her top in the US Open final.”

If you compare these article titles to the ones about Bob Knight, former Indiana University basketball coach, who literally choked a player once and would throw chairs during games, the differences are astonishing. Headlines about him read “WHY IS BOB KNIGHT ANGRY? The fatal flaw of a brilliant coach remains a mystery,” and “Throwing in the chair: The increasingly bizarre and sad legacy of Bob Knight and Indiana.” These titles and articles acknowledge – and even joke – that Knight has anger issues, yet make that “flaw” seem okay because of how successful his career was.

Leading up to this assassination attempt, Hinckley was obsessed with the 1976 film “Taxi Driver.” The action film centers around Travis Bickle, a clearly deranged man who, after attempting to assassinate a presidential candidate, saves a child prostitute (played by Jodie Foster) by killing her pimp and a few others in a gloriously gory scene. Hinckley, impressed by Foster’s performance, became unhealthily infatuated with her, going so far as to stalk her at Yale. In effort to get her attention and prove his worthiness, Hinckley decided to follow the example of Foster’s hero, Bickle, in “Taxi Driver” and attempted to kill the president. Unsurprisingly, Foster was not impressed.

April 20, 1999: Columbine High School seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold enter their school on a Tuesday morning carrying pipe bombs concealed in duffel bags. They leave them in the cafeteria, set to detonate during the busiest lunch hour, and return to Klebold’s car to watch the chaos unfold. When the time comes but no bombs have detonated, they grab their sawed-off shotguns and begin a rampage that starts in the school’s front lawn and ends with their suicides in the library. Twelve students and one teacher are killed. Twenty-four others withstand severe but non-fatal injuries. A countless number of people remain psychologically scarred by the day’s events.

Though the attack was frequently described as a lashing out in initial reports, Harris and Klebold spent over a year formulating their plan to be like “the LA riots, the Oklahoma bombing, WWII, Vietnam, Duke and Doom all mixed together.” They saw the massacre as a “mission,” retribution for the injustice they experienced at the hands of school bullies. They wished to reenact the shooting video games they played obsessively. They matched the theatricality of their video games with knee-length trench coats covering plain shirts with custom messages. Klebold’s shirt read “WRATH” Harris’s, “NATURAL SELECTION.”  

May 23, 2014: After sending a 107,000-word manifesto to his therapist, family and a few acquaintances, University of California, Santa Barbara student Elliot Rodger kills his three roommates before driving to the campus sorority houses and shooting three sorority members, killing the first two and injuring the third. He gets back in his car and drives to a deli, where he shoots and kills another student. He drives away from the scene, injuring several pedestrians with his car, until he crashes at an intersection. In the wreckage, he turns the gun on himself and dies.

Rodger spent his life blaming others for everything bad in his life. The reason that no girls liked him or that no one wanted to be his friend or that he failed in school was always other people. So, he abandoned reality, escaping into violent video games where he could control the fate of others. The massacre, inspired by “Diablo II” and “Halo,” was Rodger’s transfer of the control he felt in video games to the real world. Unfortunately, in real life, killing people does not have the same appeal and almost always results in death or prison.

There are several obvious commonalities among these examples. Guns? Sure. Mental illness? Maybe. Although these violent events are multi-causal, I emphasize the role of the glorification of violence.

First and foremost, I think it is tremendously important to maintain a nuanced and balanced view of these events. It is not the sensationalization of violence in media nor poor mental health services nor bad parenting nor gun (de)regulation nor any of the millions of reasons alone that provokes tragedies of this caliber. In every case, a blend of unfortunate circumstances pushes unstable individuals to horrific actions. The blend is not the same in every case. In some, mental illness plays a dominant role. In others, a video game addiction may desensitize an already unstable individual to the point that he believes extreme violence is an appropriate response to a perceived injustice.

However, it is negligent to refuse to delve into a probable cause simply because it is “not the only reason.” A good understanding of every contributing factor is necessary to prevent attacks like these, especially as the rate of massacres in the U.S. increases.

Whether it be in the formative pubescent years or volatile young adulthood, the media possess an enormously powerful stronghold. The thrall of media can imprint patterns incongruous with reality on impressionable minds. A multitude of studies have found that violent TV shows, movies and video games lead to aggressive behavior.

Excessive intake of media can dissociate the consumer from the real world. Especially for unstable individuals, these violent media can enchant to the point of superseding reality. John Hinckley Jr. was plagued with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder that denied him a firm concept of reality or personal identity. He was so enthralled by “Taxi Driver” that, after watching it fourteen times in theaters, he virtually assumed the identity of the main character, ultimately believing that he must kill the president to win Jodie Foster’s love.

Similarly, Elliot Rodger spent entire days in cyber cafés, playing first-person killing games, like “Halo” and “Diablo II,” or “World of Warcraft,” a fantasy role-playing game. Eventually his worldview adopted the offensive elements of these games. He began to frame life as him against the world, and he was intent on winning.

Violent video games are particularly dangerous because they enable the player to commit unspeakable acts without consequence. In his diary, Harris wrote that the massacre at Columbine will be just like “Doom,” a first-person shooter game. He also remarked that he intended to achieve a body count higher than the Oklahoma City bombing. Through a steady flow of video games and movies that conflated violence with entertainment, Harris began to think of tragic events as competitions in which the more profound tragedy wins.

Avid video gamers may be reading this with indignation, presumably thinking, “I’ve played all sorts of violent video games and haven’t committed or even considered carrying out an action similar these.” Perhaps not. But simply because most have not been inspired to commit violent acts because of violent media does not mean no one has. Furthermore, just because you have not noticed any changes in behavior does not mean that violent media has not changed you implicitly.

This argument isn’t meant to advocate a limitation of artistic license in media. Rather, it argues the opposite. Since the 1970s, violence in media has skyrocketed. Scriptwriters have forgone intricate storytelling for fantastic scenes of gore and savagery. Creators have realized that the best-selling content contains two things: sex and violence. Some of the most influential media combine the two to create an even more attention-grabbing and potentially dangerous breed of content. Take “Taxi Driver” or “Grand Theft Auto,” for example.

While I believe mental health is the number one priority in cultivating safety, universal mental health is not a realistic prospect and its imperfection is subject to a number of uncontrollable variables. By no means does mental instability automatically correlate to violence, but violent media can have much more profound effects on mentally vulnerable individuals. Unstable viewers of violent media like Hinckley or Rodger may be so entranced that the content becomes reality. How do we prevent media-born seeds of violence from being planted in their minds?

Many advocate increased government regulation of media, but federal regulation does not seem like an appropriate response. The Brady Bill, named after Reagan’s press secretary James Brady, who was shot during Hinckley’s assassination attempt, was passed by President Bill Clinton in 1994. The bill mandated background checks and required a waiting period after the purchase of a handgun. Has this piece of legislation affected conspicuous change in the rate of violence? Not evidently.

The prevalence of violent media has only increased. The difference between efforts like gun control or increased mental health awareness and the discouragement of violent media is that, while the U.S. government and NGOs have made efforts to ensure the former, the prevalence of violent media has been left essentially unregulated. Left unchecked, violent media could eventually ingrain itself into American culture.

Though incredibly idealistic, an industry-and culture-wide commitment to move away from media that glorify violence is needed to prevent the proliferation and normalization of violence. A more manageable approach is to provide fact-based data proving the connection between violent media and aggression to schools and parents, who influence what media kids consume. If we bring attention to this correlation and it is appropriately addressed, perhaps we will finally see a downward trend in violence in the U.S.

Photo courtesy of New York Times.

*Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to “Grand Theft Auto.” It should have referred to “Halo” and “Diablo II.”