Even NFL's progressive rookie symposium can't hide warts of ugly culture

The NFL took down a video from NFL.com on Sunday that should have never been up. It imparted a message to 2014 rookies that they should never have heard. It featured a "life lesson" that should never have been given.

Now the question is: what "life lesson" is the league, not the rookies, going to learn about this video.

In the video, former NFL great Cris Carter, standing in the gold Hall of Fame jacket every rookie aspires to someday wear, spoke about the need to find a "fall guy" to take the heat and perhaps the jail time when a player in the league runs afoul of the law.

"If you all got a crew, you got to have a fall guy in the crew," Carter told the new NFL players last year. "If you all have a crew, one of those fools got to know, he's the one going to jail. We'll get him out."

A place in the NFL requires an elevated sense of accountability, not a scapegoating scheme. Designating a "fall guy" not only places a false value on a player's worth, but it devalues the worth of a friendship. It turns an athlete into a commodity; it turns a relationship into a transaction.

"This was an unfortunate and inappropriate comment made by Cris Carter during the 2014 NFC rookie symposium," the NFL stated after a torrent of social media outrage on Sunday. "The comment was not representative of the message of the symposium or any other league program. The league's player engagement staff immediately expressed concern about the comment to Cris. The comment was not repeated in the 2014 AFC session or this year's symposium."

It wasn't just the comment, though. Carter brought then-rookie Teddy Bridgewater onstage and basically turned him into a piggy bank.

"Every dime that comes into Teddy is going to be earned by him in this body," Carter said. "I let my homeboys know, if you all want to roll like this, then I need to know who's gonna be the fall guy, who's gonna be driving, because y'all is not going to all do the right stuff now, so I gotta teach you how to get around all this stuff."

The assumption is that Bridgewater or his "crew" will get into trouble. So the message isn't about making the right decisions, it's about how to "get around" it when those inevitable poor decisions are made.

This was conveyed by a man wearing a Hall of Fame jacket – a man with knowledge of how to get where every rookie wants to go.

One of the sad ironies about this is that Bridgewater has been nothing but a leader, raised by a strong mother who beat breast cancer, and has stepped into his new NFL responsibility as a Vikings quarterback with maturity and grace. Carter and Warren Sapp, the supposed teachers in this "lesson," can't claim that kind of immaculate off-field résumé. Carter and Sapp may have needed fall guys; Bridgewater, we can hope, never will.

Former All-Pro Carl Banks reacted strongly to Carter's speech on his Twitter feed, writing among other things, "Tell a group of 1st time millionaires to [expletive] up then ruin his friend's life SMFH!" Banks is right: the higher salary should raise the standard too, not lower it.

But to lay all the blame on Carter is to make the same mistake the NFL did in allowing that video to remain on its site for months. The problem is not only Cris Carter; it's the NFL culture. Too much of that culture is built on the idea that these athletes are elite, and above-the-law, and to be protected (off the field) at all costs. Fixers in the form of team security officials and off-duty cops are hired and expected to erase a player's mistakes. Everyone should take the fall before a career is put in jeopardy, according to this line of thinking. One of the most unsettling examples happened last year, when Janay Palmer was encouraged to apologize publicly for her role in Ray Rice's assault on her in a hotel elevator. She was cast as the "fall guy."

The unspoken message is that with the proper insulation, mistakes won't stick. The truth is it's the opposite. A fall guy, or a fixer, or even an unscrupulous agent, can set up a player not for safe passage through the NFL, but for catastrophic self-damage. On the field, coaches stress from the very first practice that the game film will give you away and there's no place to hide from your mistakes. Blaming a "fall guy" in a football setting would be met with a lecture, a benching, or even walking papers. Off the field? Blame away.

Carter later issued an apology Sunday evening on Twitter, saying, "Seeing that video has made me realize how wrong I was. I was brought there to educate young people and instead I gave them very bad advice. Every person should take responsibility for his own actions. I’m sorry and I truly regret what I said that day."

The rookie symposium is supposed to be a sign of a reformed culture, not a reminder of the narrow-minded one. The NFL's department of player engagement, which is behind the rookie symposium, is actually geared toward chopping down the idolatry of NFL life. This workshop is meant to help players make the right decisions, which is why, at least according to the NFL's statement, Carter was pulled aside after his speech.

But even in a setting devoted to undoing the myths of NFL life, a myth was given new breath by a Hall of Famer. If it weren't for retired San Francisco 49er Chris Borland, a conscientious objector to Carter's message who is no longer playing the sport, perhaps no one would have noticed the video and the message.

It's up to younger athletes like Borland and Bridgewater to stand for something different in a new era of awareness and accountability. If the NFL still can't get it right after all these months of off-field failure, hopefully the next generation will.