This is a delicate subject, and I understand that. There is a deep, rich culture in South Florida of Cuban-Americans who risked life and limb to get to this country to escape the very man that Ozzie Guillen said he ‘loved’ and ‘respected.’ But then again, in this world of instant information – and instant replication and regurgitation of said information – everything ends up being a delicate subject sooner or later. Sometimes, it gets really difficult to see the forest through the trees.

Ozzie Guillen’s own words:

I love Fidel Castro. I respect Fidel Castro…you know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for 60 years but that [expletive] is still there.

In mulling over this quote and Ozzie’s situation for this article, I wanted to put it in a context where I would say – figuratively or literally – that I was not defending his comments. But that I can’t say that. I will defend his comments, or at least his right to make them. In fact, I find the comments to be just as innocuous, asinine, and ridiculously bull-headed as anything else he has ever said.

Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen (Howard Smith-US PRESSWIRE)

It’s tough to swallow, but Ozzie Guillen has the rights to make those comments. I can’t speak to the fact of whether the reporter from Time Magazine was asking something about Castro or the Cuban-American population in general, or if Ozzie was just spewing stream-of-consciousness sound bytes into his ear during a practice, but either way he has a right to say what he did. And I think that’s a very important part of this discussion. After all, the Cuban exiles that risked life and limb to get to this country did so for some of the very same principles. They were fleeing strife, and poverty, and tyranny. They were coming to America to be free to live their life as they see fit. Free Speech is part and parcel of that deal. An area of the world where unpopular opinions can be expressed is essential to the republic of which they are now a part.

Of course that also means that those Cuban ex-pats are now free to ask for Guillen’s head on a plate. See how tricky this is?

I take a certain amount of umbrage with this whole debacle. I remember last year, around December, when then Baltimore Oriole Luke Scott made comments regarding President Obama. He said, among other discussions of hunting and the Second Amendment, that Obama “Does not represent America”, likening him to Communist leaders, and accusing his supporters of “wanting more free stuff.”

The Orioles released a statement on the matter, but other than that not much came of it.

So is it fair to assume that Major League Baseball is more worried about the fan base surrounding the Marlins than it is about the “social responsibility” of the sport? I think so, and I don’t think they’re even trying to deny it.

The Latin community surrounding the Marlins is large, as is the amount of Latin-born players and fans across the country. It’s an easy move, from a PR standpoint, to try to put the fire out on this quickly and as neatly as possible. Ozzie Guillen himself did a good job with what seemed like a sincere and contrite apology to the community and Hispanic fan-base earlier this week. He did the right thing politically by accepting the suspension, owning up to his words, and taking one on the chin.

I have less glowing things to say about everyone else in this scandal. Like Dan LeBatard’s repeated insistence on being a part of this story, or the endless reams of paper dedicated to sportswriters trying to one-up each other about how much they despise the comments, or Major League Baseballs insistence on ‘Social Responsibility’ despite years of evidence to the contrary.

If you want to look at the hypocrisy of the situation, you don’t have to look far. Alcohol in clubhouses of Major League Baseball is not controlled by the league and is still prevalent and widely accepted. Chewing Tobacco on the field – though restricted with pressure from Congress – is still being used. The late arrival of performance enhancing drug testing (and the further, muddier waters of constitutionality of random drug testing itself). The Cleveland Indians obviously insensitive and racist logo. The years and years of turning a blind eye to integration of both African-American and Latin born players, and the only recent celebration of the ending of those horrible policies. A polite pat on their own backs of how the league isn’t a racist organization any longer without having to engage in a real discussion about it. This is the ‘Social responsibility’ the league prides itself on.

Not to mention this little gem from a 1999 game in Cuba:

Castro and Selig

Yes this really happened, and it seems almost too perfect.

I’m a big fan of calling a spade a spade. The officials of Major League Baseball and the Miami Marlins are worried about economic impact of this scandal – not social responsibility. Ozzie Guillen offended a group of people, yes. But to Baseball, Ozzie Guillen offended market share.

Ozzie Guillen was hired, in part, for this reason. On one hand, he was a face of the community the Marlins hoped to recapture. He is a strong and uncompromising man. He is one of the loudest voices – for better or for worse – of the Hispanic baseball community and thus makes a good fit for the image the Marlins hope to portray. Their new stadium is covered in imagery and design that harken to the Cuban-influenced designs of architecture and style that makes Miami so vibrant. But nothing has proven to stand out more than Guillen’s personality. And everyone involved with the process of hiring him knew that was part of the deal. I know that if I was looking to avoid a circus, I wouldn’t hire a ringmaster.

Ozzie Guillen and the Miami Marlins: How to Build a Controversy - Sports PR 101 - Sports PR 101 - A Public Relations Sports Blog

It is a brutish, immoral and intensely violent system that benefits players who have the hardest hearts on the field.

Then again, so is professional football.

When you put it in simple terms, a contract for a defensive player in the NFL is a bounty; the players bounty hunters. Football is a sport that has built its popularity on the sheer violence and the physical extremes of the sport. Every year fans pour billions of dollars – literally – into the organizations that are essentially running modern-day gladiator fights. NFL players defy the limits of physical ability, pain thresholds, and plain common sense for years on end and are payed handsomely for the privilege. Make no mistake, the average football player is a warrior, a mercenary who understands that in professional football pain can be a currency.

To the fans, the ‘bounty system’ seems immoral, brutish, and outdated. It also seems unnecessary. What do these guys need with a few extra hundred dollars, considering the size of their contracts? How could anyone be so reckless with their safety and the safety of others for such a trivial amount of money in the grand scheme of things? It is a mentality that the media and the fans either cannot or refuse to understand.

Imagine you are an average defensive player in the NFL. You know that your job is on the line constantly. You probably have several nagging injuries that will soon become bad enough to receive treatment or cause you to miss games. You know that next year a whole new crop of younger, less damaged and hyper-motivated players will arrive at camp who can’t wait to steal your job. You need to make a statement – you need to show the coaches, your teammates and prospective future employers that you have what it takes to continue playing in the most elite level of the game. Then your teammates and your coaches tell you about a pool they have going on. They say “Just so you know, it’s up to $500 if you can take so-and-so out of the game.” You get into the game, and you get a solid hit on said player, and he needs to take a couple plays off. Everyone on that team knows your name, even if it’s just for a week. You are the guy that won the pool. You are the bad ass that sat the quarterback down. You are a warrior. A mercenary.

If it seems foreign, wrong, and a little dirty – you’re right. But that’s football. I’m not condoning the injury of players for the enjoyment of others, no one should be so callus as to take pleasure in something like that. All I’m saying is that in the cold, ruthless logic of the NFL trenches, the system makes perfect sense. If you have trouble understanding the parameters of a system that rewards pain and brutality, then you have moral dilemma revolving around football itself. The sport is violent. The sport is a systematic breakdown of human bodies for weeks and years on end. A well-run team is a machine that fuels itself on machismo, ego and pride. Getting your name called in a team meeting for winning the ‘bounty’ is one way to make sure you have a source of renewable energy. As a fan, you have a choice – either accept the machine for what it is – a violent and visceral experience that rewards its participants with money to inflict pain upon each other, or don’t.

Gregg Williams is not a villain, he is a man who supported a system with roots as deep the league itself. You can call him arrogant or ignorant for defying the league’s investigation as well as his owner and GM’s instructions, and that would perfectly acceptable. He was walking a fine line: one that exists in every aspect of playing, watching and covering the sport.

The media may have concerns over the image of the NFL and the New Orleans Saints for glorifying and rewarding injury and incapacitation. But when one of those players gets injured, a slow motion replay of that event will be played ad nauseam throughout the day. No one will bat an eye about that. Every Sunday there will be devastating, clean hits on the ‘Top Ten’. This is perfectly acceptable behavior for a media organization to reward the bounty hunters, but not for anyone else. It’s fine for fans to pay money to owners, sponsors, and casinos to witness a bloody battle where people are constantly injured, but it’s egregious to consider the prospect that players and coaches reward the opportunity.

Watching football is acknowledging and abetting a culture of violent pride. The Saints took it to the extreme end of the equation, of course, but they did what they felt had to do make sure their players were meanest and most aggressive SOB’s on the field any given Sunday.

So where do we draw the line? In High School, we were taught how to put people in the ground as hard as possible. As 14, 15, and 16 year olds we were taught how to harden our hearts against the fact that we were, in fact, hurting people for an extended period of time. In college, if you are a defensive player you know you need to hit people as hard as possible in order to get noticed. If the specific intent of the player on the field is to play dirty then that is a serious issue. If the intent of the player on the field is to hit another man harder then anyone else – whether or not you agree with it, that is football. How do you control violence in a game that is built on it?

The ethics of a ‘bounty’ system are fuzzy at best. If you really want to be honest about it, you could say the same about football itself.

NFL Bounties: Drawing a Fine Line - Sports PR 101 - Sports PR 101 - A Public Relations Sports Blog