Ready for some football - anyway?

INDIANAPOLIS - It's Eagles and Colts on "Monday Night Football."

Are you ready for some football?

Is it even OK to watch the games now?

Does patronizing the NFL feed the problem; and, is there really an epidemic?

How do you define epidemic?

Is it realistic or fair to expect a sliver of the populace, no matter how privileged and sheltered, to collect differently from the rest of the populace?

Perhaps it is an epidemic when we can't remember which star "whooped" his preschooler, which one slugged his fiancée and which one tossed his girlfriend around until she begged him to kill her.

So, now, should we feel guilty for enjoying the competition?

Did you feel a little dirty flipping through the channels yesterday, knowing what some of these supermen trained to violence do to the helpless and the weak? They, the victims, who have no one to stand up for them; shouldn't we?

How can you focus on the football when we have been bombarded with images of switches and welts and left hooks and body slams?

But then, should the actions of a few indict the efforts of the many?

Furthermore, who are we to judge? Didn't we create this monster?

The NFL is the top sports product in the United States, and the worst.

It displays a dearth of humility, a wealth of arrogance, and a glut of self-importance. That is the essence of the NFL: hyper-secret practicing; dismissive attitudes toward anyone not affiliated with The Team; preening and strutting of underdeveloped men stuck in perpetual adolescence, all for the entertainment of the masses, who derive their own self-worth from the exploits of billionaires' puppets.

Really, should we expect these puppets and their masters - any of them, if not all of them - to behave better than the people who worship them?

After all, according to the Center for Disease Control, one in every four American women has been assaulted by a partner; one in every five, raped.

The NFL is doing far better than that; well, as far as we know. Victims are much more likely to complete an anonymous survey than to call the cops and testify; witness Janay Palmer Rice, Ray Rice's personal punching bag.

This despite the NFL's dysfunctional foundation.

Regular people cannot conceive of how insular the lives of football players can be. Beginning in middle school, the best among them are slotted for greatness. Through college they seldom even have to be accountable for their performances on the field, much less their antics off it.

Then, once they are in "The League," their fame acts as a shield.

Well, it used to, anyway.

There was a time when the games actually mattered . . . wasn't there?

Mattered more than endangering the welfare of children, and mattered more than beating a woman unconscious in an elevator.

Actually, no.

It never mattered more than that.

We might have ignored it - there have been 83 domestic-violence arrests of NFL players since 2000, more than any other crime, according to USA Today - but it always mattered more.

Shame on us.

Sadly, the games just meant more to the public, and to the press. They meant more than reining in batterers, entitled since they were teens, acting out their privilege and aggression with impunity.

After witnessing Ray Rice's left hook, after seeing the welts on the legs of Adrian Peterson's 4-year-old son, after reading testimony from Greg Hardy's ex-girlfriend, we have been jarred from our stupor. Finally.

On the eve of a "Monday Night Football" game that once would have sparked debate about which quarterback was more valuable to his team, the dialogue continues to center on which miscreant in the NFL is the least savory. Consider:

* Greg Hardy, Carolina's convicted pass rusher who dragged his girlfriend into the bedroom, choked her and threw her on a couch covered in firearms (which he was forced to relinquish). Hardy is appealing his conviction, which drew him 18 months of probation and a 60-day suspended sentence, and so may play for the Panthers and make $13.116 million this season. Neither the NFL nor the Panthers has disciplined Hardy, who was deactivated by Carolina yesterday.

Due process has been completed, to the point where Hardy is clearly culpable. Panthers owner Jerry Richardson knows this. That is why he wept at his own hypocrisy when he received a humanitarian award Wednesday. Humanitarians do not condone the inhumane . . . especially when condoning the inhumane profits them. It is the bloodiest sort of money.

* Rice, who spat on and belted his girlfriend in an Atlantic City casino elevator, then dragged her unconscious body from the elevator car and dropped her like a sack of bricks; their exit from the car was released on video almost immediately. Rice copped a plea and was directed to take part in a pretrial program, thereby avoiding the 3-to-5-year sentence that accompanied a conviction on third-degree assault. He first was given a two-game suspension by commissioner Roger Goodell, who, after the release of a more detailed video (and the release of Rice by the Ravens), indefinitely suspended Rice from the league.

* Ray McDonald, the 49ers' defensive tackle taken into custody on Aug. 31 after police responded to an emergency call and noticed bruises on the neck of his pregnant fiancée. He has not been charged. He played last night against the Bears.

* Adrian Peterson, the Vikings' running back who is accused of whipping the bare skin of his preschool son with a switch made of a green tree branch so that it left welts and drew blood. Peterson flew to Texas on Saturday, where he was arrested and booked on child-abuse charges. The Vikings deactivated Peterson for yesterday's game.

With all of the brutality both alleged and proven, it was harder to focus on the report the NFL issued Friday that asserted that almost 30 percent of former players will suffer from brain issues at a relatively young age.

It made LeSean McCoy's 20-cent tip on a $60 check seem less than trivial.

It even muted, to a degree, the laughable six-game suspension being served by Colts owner Jim Irsay, convicted of driving while impaired March 16 in Carmel, Ind., a tony suburb of Indianapolis. He also had to pay a $500,000 fine.

Irsay is an employer, and, so, he writes the rules and sets the policy. Therefore, his penalty must be exponentially stiffer than his employees'. He should have been suspended for the season, issued a $1 million fine and forfeited a midround draft pick.

But then, why would Goodell hammer one of his bosses?

Surely, the penalty will be stiffer when the next owner who pops pills and drives high is caught on tape running over a kid in a crosswalk.

Sigh.

So, are you ready for some football?

Will you ever be again?