This, from a noted Los Angeles Times sports columnist and ESPN talking head, refers to some rule-enforcement snafu in last night’s Lions-Seahawks game.

Meanwhile, the NFL has seen many of its players arrested for domestic violence in the past year and has basically blown it off, the league is involved in protracted litigation with one of its marquee players and a study came out just a couple of weeks ago showing that football players have shockingly high rates of CTE, which is literally killing them.

There is a belief, held by virtually everyone in the sports discourse business, that sports exist separate and apart from the real world, that what happens off the field is rarely more than a “distraction” from the playing of games and that what happens on the field is of paramount importance.

This is exactly backwards.