Sean Payton is no Saint. Which is odd to say, because technically he is exactly that, the head football coach of the New Orleans Saints. Perhaps more specifically, he’s not typically accused of unusual virtue, largely because of his tie to and subsequent suspension for Bountygate, where New Orleans players earned cash for hard shots on the other team. So his voice on ethical affairs will always be held, fairly or unfairly, with a degree of skepticism.
That said, this week Payton did offer some words of reason about guns in America, adding an ethical perspective towards a debate that that’s often neither reasonable nor ethically engaged. Payton was responding to the shooting death of former Saints defense end Will Smith, who was killed Saturday night after 28 year old Cardell Hayes shot both Smith and his girlfriend, who survived, after a fender bender. The story will likely meander for some time as Hayes tries to craft the other side of the story, even if there isn’t one. At the most basic, it seems a case of road rage gone haywire, all on the streets of the otherwise tranquil Garden District of New Orleans, far from where violent crime typically happens in this party town.
Payton opened his comments by noting that his views may not be all that popular in Louisiana, and unapologetically so. He continued by essentially lambasting every popular tenant of the NRA. He didn’t simply call for fewer guns, but essentially for no guns. He said that 200 years from now, we’d look back and wonder what the fuss was all about, like we do now for human crimes like slavery and torture. And he argued against the vernacular of self-defense and personal safety, citing the fact that in Britain, not even cops have guns. Lastly, he made the point that he’s no hippy liberal, but leans right on a lot of issues, as presumably does the league itself.
The NFL and its players aren’t strangers to the world of guns. Players have guestimated, unscientifically, that the vast majority in the league own guns, far more than in the general public. And there have been more than a few notable cases of NFL related gun violence, including linebacker Jovan Belcher, who notoriously shot his girlfriend before driving to the Kansas City Chief’s facility and killing himself. Former New York Giant Plaxico Burress accidentally shot himself in the leg at a night club with a gun he didn’t have a permit for, which landed him in jail – truly insult to injury. We naturally assume football players, violent by occupation, to have a firearm or two, either in storage or on their person. So for that reason, we’d hardly expect an NFL coach to speak vocally against guns, if for no other reason than job preservation.
By all accounts, Will Smith’s murder had nothing to do with football. He was someone in the wrong place at the wrong time. There’s no tie to CTE, and it doesn’t look like he was targeted for his wealth or relative fame. So in some regard, the league itself is off the hook, allowing it the apolitical perspective on this and any other issues that might cost viewership from either side of the political aisle.
That said, Coach Payton’s comments should be both lauded and regarded for their potential. There are few people with the power and platform to take on the gun lobby, an industry that, with all due respect to the cigarette folks, are the worst we have to offer. And most people who have that gravitas are either strawmen – say, actors seen as liberal fronts – or politicians pandering for votes. But sports figures are different – especially those in the testosterone fueled landscape of the NFL, where we’d assume gun advocacy would find a happy home. Sean Payton speaking out against guns is like Bobby Riggs denouncing unequal pay. It means something.
It’s unlikely the NRA will roll over because an NFL coach doesn’t like them. But North Carolina is about to revisit one of the worst laws since the Embargo Act of 1807 because Bruce Springsteen won’t play there. So don’t undervalue the impact The Boss, a musical or NFL one, can have. Now if the league itself release a similar policy platform on guns that Payton did, or refuse to play in a state with outrageous gun laws – let’s say Texas – then we’d really have something.
But for now, be proud of Sean Payton for doing something bold. He may be no Saint, but this week, he certainly preached the gospel.
Keith Strudler is the director of the Marist College Center for Sports Communication and an associate professor of communication. You can follow him on twitter at @KeithStrudler
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