The NFL has been embarrassed by a cluster of allegations about players’ violence. Pentagon tackles NFL

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has asked for an accounting of the Defense Department’s ties to the National Football League, the Pentagon said Friday, as the Obama administration leans on the NFL over its handling of players’ alleged domestic violence.

Hagel’s request is not a formal “review” or “investigation” of the Pentagon’s ties to pro football, said Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby. But, in describing it, he did take the opportunity to make clear that the department has its eye on the league.


“Secretary Hagel, just like every leader in this building, is monitoring the situation ongoing with the NFL,” Kirby said. “We have high expectations of ourselves and our own behavior and our conduct, and we have high expectations of the organizations with whom we partner, with whom we work.”

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The NFL has been embarrassed by a cluster of allegations about players’ violence against spouses or children, something its commissioner, Roger Goodell, was expected to address in a news conference on Friday afternoon.

Kirby is at least the second administration spokesman to thump the league, following an admonition by White House press secretary Josh Earnest that the NFL must “get a handle” on domestic violence. Kirby acknowledged, however, that the Pentagon has had its own high-profile problems with sexual violence.

“Nobody takes issues of violence, sexual assault more seriously than us. We have more work to do and we know that,” Kirby said. “We also have high expectations, as I said, of organizations that we partner with. So the secretary is viewing with concern what he is seeing the National Football League go through. That’s why he’s asking questions about the whole scope of our interaction with them.”

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The military and the NFL have a close relationship going back decades. Each has something the other wants: The military services offer flyovers, access to ships and bases and recruiting dollars to help get its message in front of young men in the NFL’s audience. The NFL, meanwhile, prizes the high esteem in which Americans hold U.S. troops, which helps it sell an ideal, wholesome image of football as an all-American game.

More recently the relationship has become about more than image, as when the Army and the NFL partnered to share information about traumatic brain injuries. Tens of thousands of American troops suffered head trauma in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and commanders hope the NFL’s familiarity with head injuries can help both entities treat them more effectively.

Kirby said that kind of partnership could prove helpful to both the Pentagon and the NFL, but that the Defense Department grants no exceptions to its high standards to anyone with whom it’s affiliated.

“Our expectations of organizations we work with is the same that we have of ourselves,” he said, “that everybody is going to be treated with respect. That’s there’s going to be accountability when they’re not, and there’ll be transparency about the efforts. Those are the standards we hold ourselves to.”