10 ms·

Former NFL Player, After Settling Title IX Lawsuit, Plots a Comeback

53 points by jseliger 7y ago

rmason 7y ago
I live near East Lansing and have friends who know Keith Mumphery. In the swirl of the Dr. Nassar scandal some well meaning Michigan State administrator falsely ruled against him in this lady's appeal. I was impressed by this balanced article and I hope it finally means justice for him. But as I said on Twitter, will the NFL listen? Sadly the scandals locally are far from over with at least two court cases against former MSU administrators ongoing.
- mgamache 7y ago
  Mumphery is a good, but not great NFL talent. I bet he gets sidelined. Two Years is a long time to be away from the game.
  - voidwtf 7y ago
    I hope the settlement was commensurate to that likely possibility. Who knows where he could have been now, not even he knows. That opportunity was stolen from him. This is just as bad as someone being falsely imprisoned IMO. There are so many opportunities that may have been availed him. Maybe he’s not the greatest NFL talent, but there is no way to know what might have grown out of that experience. Maybe he would have ended up applying his skills and knowledge in some other way within the industry just having been exposed to it directly.
    - mgamache 7y ago
      Right, even at the league min he would have made at least a million dollars.
- bsder 7y ago
  > But as I said on Twitter, will the NFL listen? I suspect an incoming lawsuit against the NFL will get their attention. If they really cut him without any investigation, that's going to be a violation of his contract. Obviously, you won't win this if you actually get convicted for a crime, but the fact that he has been exonerated means the NFL is guilty of a contract violation and is going to have to cough up for it. I suspect that will finally get the attention of some important people in the NFL.
  - ohithereyou 7y ago
    The NFL sees head injuries in the athletes that play for it as "the cost of doing business", so I have a feeling that they'd just cough up and move on, especially given the reputation they've had recently about minimizing punishments for domestic violence against women.
  - jetti 7y ago
    That may get him some money but I doubt it would get him back on the field or even on a practice squad.
jseliger 7y ago
It seems that most people don't understand how insane and discriminatory Title IX is: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/laura-kipniss-endless-trial-by-title-ix https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/laura-kipniss-endle...
- cperciva 7y ago
  I don't think Title IX is discriminatory. Rather, it has been applied in discriminatory ways.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    I'm not sure that's a meaningful distinction. The literal text of Title IX is so short it can't possibly be discriminatory: > No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. Everything that people normally refer to by the phrase "Title IX", from Title IX offices to Title IX cases to Title IX procedure, is an application.
    - BurningFrog 7y ago
      The text of Title IX is almost irrelevant. What controls its application is directives from the Department of Education. The controversial and important one here is the "Dear Colleague" letter the Obama administration sent out in 2011 that substantially chipped away at due process rights for defendants in sexual misconduct cases on campus. https://reason.com/2017/09/22/breaking-betsy-devos-withdraws-dear-coll/ https://reason.com/2017/09/22/breaking-betsy-devos-withdraws...
  - ohithereyou 7y ago
    That's like saying New York City's prior "stop and frisk" policy wasn't discriminatory, just that it was applied in discriminatory ways. If you have a policy that can be applied in discriminatory ways then I would argue that it is discriminatory unless the text of the policy limits its application in some way to reduce or prevent its discriminatory application.
colechristensen 7y ago
It is disturbing to more and more find myself on the other side of the culture war. There is nothing "liberal" about what is going on here and the people who are doing it are by numbers moderate not extremist. Where do you go when you support free expression and freedom to pursue the good life however you see fit?
- thrower123 7y ago
  Quillette? Then people say you are "alt-right", although they are considerably more nuanced than most outlets.
  - colechristensen 7y ago
    Not for me. I don't want to engage heavily on the other side of these topics, I think the topics are a poison. There is real discrimination in the world and this isn't it.
throwaway-3891 7y ago
I write this as someone who considers himself a liberal in the American political sense. As I see it, there is a serious tension in the way we think about sexual assault. We assert two things: 1. women very rarely make false claims of sexual assault, so we should believe their claims, and 2. higher rates of criminal convictions and incarceration among black people are largely explained by institutional racism, rather than truly higher criminality among black people. These things conflict in the apparent over-representation of black (and minority in general) students in campus sexual assault accusations [1]. Hard numbers don't seem very common here, but that article contains qualitative testimony: "In 2015, in The New Yorker, Jeannie Suk Gersen, a Harvard Law School professor, wrote that in general, the administrators and faculty members she’d spoken with who 'routinely work on sexual-misconduct cases' said that 'most of the complaints they see are against minorities.'" That article offers also one pretty shocking statistic: "In the 2013–14 academic year, 4.2 percent of Colgate’s students were black. According to the university’s records, in that year black male students were accused of 50 percent of the sexual violations reported to the university, and they made up 40 percent of the students formally adjudicated. During the three academic years from 2012–13 to 2014–15, black students were accused of 25 percent of the sexual misconduct reported to the university, and made up 21 percent of the students referred for formal hearings." As a result, I struggle to reconcile points 1 and 2 above. My best guess -- and it's similar to what that article hypothesizes -- is that encounters that already exist in some grey area of drunkenness and consent are more likely to be viewed as assault when the man is "other", i.e. black or minority. But this seems awful. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the-question-of-race-in-campus-sexual-assault-cases/539361/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the-qu...
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  >encounters that already exist in some grey area of drunkenness and consent are more likely to be viewed as assault when the man is "other", i.e. black or minority. But this seems awful. I agree with you but I'd like like to point out that this is just saying "it's not creepy when attractive people do it" but adding another couple dimensions (race and similiar) to "attractive" which is, as you said, awful. I can't think of any circumstances in which a double standard like that, especially one predicated on circumstances that are in large part outside one's control (hitting the gym won't make you 6'4", clearly being a star athlete didn't help this guy) is acceptable.

53 points by jseliger 7y ago

I live near East Lansing and have friends who know Keith Mumphery. In the swirl of the Dr. Nassar scandal some well meaning Michigan State administrator falsely ruled against him in this lady's appeal. I was impressed by this balanced article and I hope it finally means justice for him. But as I said on Twitter, will the NFL listen? Sadly the scandals locally are far from over with at least two court cases against former MSU administrators ongoing.

mgamache 7y ago
Mumphery is a good, but not great NFL talent. I bet he gets sidelined. Two Years is a long time to be away from the game.
- voidwtf 7y ago
  I hope the settlement was commensurate to that likely possibility. Who knows where he could have been now, not even he knows. That opportunity was stolen from him. This is just as bad as someone being falsely imprisoned IMO. There are so many opportunities that may have been availed him. Maybe he’s not the greatest NFL talent, but there is no way to know what might have grown out of that experience. Maybe he would have ended up applying his skills and knowledge in some other way within the industry just having been exposed to it directly.
  - mgamache 7y ago
    Right, even at the league min he would have made at least a million dollars.
bsder 7y ago
> But as I said on Twitter, will the NFL listen? I suspect an incoming lawsuit against the NFL will get their attention. If they really cut him without any investigation, that's going to be a violation of his contract. Obviously, you won't win this if you actually get convicted for a crime, but the fact that he has been exonerated means the NFL is guilty of a contract violation and is going to have to cough up for it. I suspect that will finally get the attention of some important people in the NFL.
- ohithereyou 7y ago
  The NFL sees head injuries in the athletes that play for it as "the cost of doing business", so I have a feeling that they'd just cough up and move on, especially given the reputation they've had recently about minimizing punishments for domestic violence against women.
- jetti 7y ago
  That may get him some money but I doubt it would get him back on the field or even on a practice squad.

jseliger 7y ago

It seems that most people don't understand how insane and discriminatory Title IX is: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/laura-kipniss-endless-trial-by-title-ix https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/laura-kipniss-endle...

cperciva 7y ago
I don't think Title IX is discriminatory. Rather, it has been applied in discriminatory ways.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  I'm not sure that's a meaningful distinction. The literal text of Title IX is so short it can't possibly be discriminatory: > No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. Everything that people normally refer to by the phrase "Title IX", from Title IX offices to Title IX cases to Title IX procedure, is an application.
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    The text of Title IX is almost irrelevant. What controls its application is directives from the Department of Education. The controversial and important one here is the "Dear Colleague" letter the Obama administration sent out in 2011 that substantially chipped away at due process rights for defendants in sexual misconduct cases on campus. https://reason.com/2017/09/22/breaking-betsy-devos-withdraws-dear-coll/ https://reason.com/2017/09/22/breaking-betsy-devos-withdraws...
- ohithereyou 7y ago
  That's like saying New York City's prior "stop and frisk" policy wasn't discriminatory, just that it was applied in discriminatory ways. If you have a policy that can be applied in discriminatory ways then I would argue that it is discriminatory unless the text of the policy limits its application in some way to reduce or prevent its discriminatory application.

colechristensen 7y ago

It is disturbing to more and more find myself on the other side of the culture war. There is nothing "liberal" about what is going on here and the people who are doing it are by numbers moderate not extremist. Where do you go when you support free expression and freedom to pursue the good life however you see fit?

thrower123 7y ago
Quillette? Then people say you are "alt-right", although they are considerably more nuanced than most outlets.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  Not for me. I don't want to engage heavily on the other side of these topics, I think the topics are a poison. There is real discrimination in the world and this isn't it.

throwaway-3891 7y ago

I write this as someone who considers himself a liberal in the American political sense. As I see it, there is a serious tension in the way we think about sexual assault. We assert two things: 1. women very rarely make false claims of sexual assault, so we should believe their claims, and 2. higher rates of criminal convictions and incarceration among black people are largely explained by institutional racism, rather than truly higher criminality among black people. These things conflict in the apparent over-representation of black (and minority in general) students in campus sexual assault accusations [1]. Hard numbers don't seem very common here, but that article contains qualitative testimony: "In 2015, in The New Yorker, Jeannie Suk Gersen, a Harvard Law School professor, wrote that in general, the administrators and faculty members she’d spoken with who 'routinely work on sexual-misconduct cases' said that 'most of the complaints they see are against minorities.'" That article offers also one pretty shocking statistic: "In the 2013–14 academic year, 4.2 percent of Colgate’s students were black. According to the university’s records, in that year black male students were accused of 50 percent of the sexual violations reported to the university, and they made up 40 percent of the students formally adjudicated. During the three academic years from 2012–13 to 2014–15, black students were accused of 25 percent of the sexual misconduct reported to the university, and made up 21 percent of the students referred for formal hearings." As a result, I struggle to reconcile points 1 and 2 above. My best guess -- and it's similar to what that article hypothesizes -- is that encounters that already exist in some grey area of drunkenness and consent are more likely to be viewed as assault when the man is "other", i.e. black or minority. But this seems awful. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the-question-of-race-in-campus-sexual-assault-cases/539361/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the-qu...

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>encounters that already exist in some grey area of drunkenness and consent are more likely to be viewed as assault when the man is "other", i.e. black or minority. But this seems awful. I agree with you but I'd like like to point out that this is just saying "it's not creepy when attractive people do it" but adding another couple dimensions (race and similiar) to "attractive" which is, as you said, awful. I can't think of any circumstances in which a double standard like that, especially one predicated on circumstances that are in large part outside one's control (hitting the gym won't make you 6'4", clearly being a star athlete didn't help this guy) is acceptable.