American Football set to make a stand against racial slurs in sport.
The head of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, which manages cultural diversity in the NFL, expects the league to adopt in-game penalties for players who are found to use the N-word.
Head of the Alliance John Wooten believes the move, which will see a offending player’s team give up 15 yards for a first infraction and an ejection for second-time offenders, will pass the new rule soon.
Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome, who is also a part of the Alliance said the new move will be discussed in the coming days.
“We did talk about it, I’m sure that you saw near the end of the year that Fritz Pollard (Alliance) came out very strong with the message that the league needs to do something about the language on the field,” Newsome said. “So we did discuss over the last three days.”
Homophbic slurs could also be grouped under the same banner, which is apt given the NFL could draft its first openly gay player in Michael Sam, who is up for consideration for the 2014 draft.
Wooten said he hoped the ban on the N-word would be pushed through so the league can set a standard for the rest of society to follow.
“I will be totally shocked if the competition committee does not uphold us on what we’re trying to do,” Wooten said. “We want this word to be policed from the parking lot to the equipment room to the locker room.
“Secretaries, PR people, whoever, we want it eliminated completely and want it policed everywhere.”
“We will now go down to Naples (Florida) starting next Friday and spend more time talking about it,” Newsome said.
“We had some officials in our meeting that actually out there on the field and hear the language. We’ll be able to put all that together and if there’s a need to we will present something to our owners in Orlando.
“With any rule that we put into play we have to look at it from A to Z and find out any unintended consequences as much as the consequences. So, as it was stated in our meeting, there are mics everywhere, so if something has been said it’s probably going to be captured somewhere. So there will be an opportunity to get it verified if we have to.”
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