What Peyton Manning allegations tell us about sports

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http://www.coltsnflofficialauthentic.com/AUTHENTIC+BJOERN+WERNER+JE... Two cannons of confetti rained on American sports when the final gun concluded Super Bowl 50 last Sunday. The first was literal, the meaningless strips of colored paper celebrating Von Miller, Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos. The second, which came later in the form of the weeklong narratives surrounding Cam Newton's postgame news conference, Peyton Manning's last-stand triumph and allegations of sexual assault, was metaphorical, resembling pieces of a jigsaw puzzle tossed high, disparate but interconnected, and this confetti is not harmless.

The pieces are scattered on the floor. In between each is noise -- angry, perplexed, frustrating, resigned, aggrieved noise. For a week, Newton's sour news conference has received the treatment of the major news event of the day, bigger than Miller, bigger than the Broncos, even though Newton never once raised his voice and did not verbally attack the assembled press -- in a time when Bill Belichick and Gregg Popovich unprofessionally make daily sport out of belittling professional journalists and it's laughed off as curmudgeonly genius.

Demarcus Lawrence Womens Jersey In a time of Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson, Greg Hardy, Johnny Manziel and Baylor University, Newton being upset that he lost a football game has received far more attention than Manning's involvement in being named in a lawsuit against the University of Tennessee alleging the university has fostered a hostile work environment for women. The lawsuit alleges that Manning -- already hounded by HGH allegations this summer -- placed his naked genitals on the face of a female athletic trainer in 1996 while she was examining him for an injury. Manning has denied that he assaulted the trainer, saying instead that he was "mooning" a teammate. And in spite of his inclusion in the lawsuit, the mainstream power machine -- the networks, the NFL itself, the media -- is reluctant or outright unwilling to add Manning to a list that in the past it has been so unworried about naming.

The world is filled with false equivalents, but without discussion of all of the pieces, without journalism actually doing its job and connecting them, the public is left to its own devices to explain the noise between the pieces. Right now it concludes conspiracy: It concludes the football machine has created Manning as the untouchable, corporate golden child whose legacy as a role model will be destroyed by covering the allegations. Then, in an era of concussion concerns, the corporate dollars and public goodwill he generates as the humble face of ability and class (something the anti-Dabbers believe Newton lacked and for which he deserves eternal punishment), well, that will disappear, too. Thus, the recourse is more conspiracy: to bury the story, to let Manning walk.

Dick Butkus Youth Jersey In the black community, the public has concluded the conspiracy is, yes, that the price of protecting Manning is sacrificing Newton: Because the airwaves won't cover one, it must be filled by castigating the other. In New England, still wounded and enraged by Deflategate, it concludes the NFL will go after the Patriots, that the league was willing to sacrifice Tom Brady. It has concluded the NFL will go after everyone and anyone but Peyton Manning, who has created a narrative of football royalty -- born a prince of a football family, embedded with NFL business partners and rumored as potential Tennessee Titans owner someday. It concludes that the NFL machine will not only avoid investigating him, but it also will trip over itself to protect him. And thus, Manning is insulated from sexual assault and PED allegations and anything else that would diminish his currency, and by extension, theirs.
To women, the conclusion of conspiracy is that a professional such as Dr. Jamie Naughright, the woman who says Manning sat on her face two decades ago, does not matter, either to the runaway college money machine or to the NFL, if the cost is holding Peyton Manning accountable and risking the narrative of wholesomeness he represents. Naughright and women like her have for decades been sacrificed not only by the league but by the media outlets that decide whose stories get told and whose don't.

http://www.chargersshopnfl.com/Authentic-Jason-Verrett-Jersey Challenging Manning required confronting the entire monument of his enormous privilege, from his being the face of the first family of the NFL to challenging one of the most powerful college conferences, the SEC, to the task of revisiting the uncomfortable beliefs of some that maybe women don't belong in the locker room after all.

This cannot be avoided, either.