The NFL's Security Team Is an Extralegal Clusterfuck

In an appearance on SportsCenter the morning of September 11, former Colts executive Bill Polian said something he wasn't supposed to. When asked if he thought it was possible that Roger Goodell and the NFL's front office hadn't seen the tape of Ray Rice punching his wife in an Atlantic City elevator, Polian told anchor Chris McKendry, "For all the years that I was in the NFL, NFL Security and the NFL's ability to protect its integrity—the so-called 'protection of the shield'—was unmatched in American business. I mean, you did not step out of line in the NFL… The office was there to make sure that the clubs, the players, the reputation of the NFL remained unsullied."

The segment was cut short for unknown reasons, according to Deadspin. Polian appeared on SportsCenter again 20 minutes later and was asked the same question by McKendry. His new response was perfectly milquetoast: "Things can slip through the cracks… The CEO, who is in effect Roger Goodell, doesn't get all the information he needs all the time." Polian made no mention of NFL Security the second time around.

Not half an hour following Polian's mention of NFL Security, he completely changed his tune. This leads to an obvious question: What is NFL Security?

NFL Security covers a wide terrain; ranging from stadium game-day security to running background checks on NFL players to keeping trespassers away from team practices. It is the group responsible for preventing gamblers, game fixers, drug pushers, con artists and others from manipulating NFL players to devious ends. They inform players how to stay on the good side of the law and avoid negative press. To help perform these duties, the NFL employs a vast network to spy on NFL assets and others near the teams, a force that serves as Roger Goodell's brand police.

This investigative force, comprised of former police officers all the way up to ex-FBI and CIA agents, is the piece of NFL Security most relevant to the Ray Rise case. As the Washington Post reported in September, the unit is "set up just like the FBI" with "field offices" in all NFL cities. Their job is summed up nicely by Larry Wansley, the director of security for the Dallas Cowboys: "If you can be proactive and prevent a guy from screwing his life up or screwing up the brand, whether it be the [team] or the league, that's the purpose."

The brand protection mantra dates back to 1946. The NFL was reeling from an attempted fix of that year's championship game. Commissioner Bert Bell issued an ultimatum to his owners following the incident, stating NFL personnel, "must be not only absolutely honest; they must be above suspicion." As investigative reporter Dan Moldea wrote in Interference: How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football, this was the origin of the entity we now know as NFL Security. Bell swiftly hired former law enforcement officers as "consultants" in multiple cities to serve as his eyes and ears. It was "Protect the Shield," 14 years before the NFL Shield even existed.

NFL security was beefed up under Commissioner Pete Rozelle following another betting scandal in 1963, which led to suspensions for Packers legend Paul Hornung and Lions defensive lineman Alex Karras. Rozelle installed a system much like that described in the Washington Post article, with outposts in each NFL city and with many ex-FBI agents in tow, including Jack Danahy, NFL Security's director from 1969-1980, and Warren Welsh, his successor. [Interference]

NFL Security's defining motivation since its inception has been a paranoia of the compromised man. Any player with sufficient debt or dirt on his record, by NFL Security's logic, is a ticking time bomb waiting to destroy the NFL's reputation. Welsh told Moldea, "Our worst case would be the athlete who is strung out on drugs and has a line of credit with his drug dealer and can't pay the bill. Then he gets that knock on the door. And [the player] says, 'Hey, I told you. I can't pay the bill.' And then [the dealer] says, 'Hey, I don't want your money, but now you're going to work for us.'" [Interference]

A 2014 documentary on gay former Washington tight end Jerry Smith, who played from 1965-1977 and appeared on two Pro Bowl teams, exposed serious institutional homophobia at NFL Security, beginning at the top with Danahy: "If there were actually a homosexual in the league, which I have no evidence there is, if you have a homosexual, he's always subject to possible compromise," he said in 1975. "That's a standard situation in world activities. In espionage, there's been a history in international affairs of homosexuals being compromised and used against their better interests so that would naturally be a matter of concern to us."

Potential compromises also include gambling connections, past criminal records, and gang affiliations. But anything that can produce negative PR falls under the banner of "compromising" and that includes domestic violence. "Let's say they get a death threat or some altercation with [a player's] family," ex-CIA agent Joe Adams said to ESPN The Magazine in 2006, "They have their own people who do damage control and secure the situation. They'll say, 'We don't talk to this outside of your family or the team—and we don't talk to the press.' Then they'll ask the appropriate questions of the appropriate people. They've got their own internal private detective service."

Warren Sapp discovered the NFL's internal private detective service at 11:30 PM on the eve of the 1995 NFL Draft. A leak to ESPN and Newsday resulted in an explosive report that Sapp had failed six marijuana tests and a cocaine test during his time at the University of Miami. NFL Spokesman Greg Aiello told reporters, "We cannot discuss any information that's provided to the clubs by NFL Security."

A South Florida Sun-Sentinel investigation revealed Sapp had indeed failed drug tests at Miami, but the investigation found two fewer positive tests for marijuana—including at least one withheld from Miami administrators by Hurricanes Head Coach Dennis Erickson—and no evidence of any failed tests for cocaine. Sapp was a projected top-five pick in the draft and fell to the twelfth spot, where he was drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and earned a signing bonus lower by "several million dollars" as a result.

Sapp wrote of his experience in his autobiography, Sapp Attack: My Story. He first discovered something was awry in a pre-draft workout with the Cleveland Browns. Then Browns Head Coach Bill Belichick told Sapp, "Son, I want to draft you so bad my dick is hard." When asked what was stopping him, Belichick responded, "Mike Lombardi (the general manager) won't let me." Sapp discovered there was a report making the rounds across the league from NFL Security, "that I was a bad guy, that I hung out with dope dealers and drug fiends."

Matthew W. Finkin is a professor of labor law at the University of Illinois as well as an active labor arbitrator and a member of the National Academy of Arbitrators. "If an employer hires a credit reporting agency to conduct a background check for employment purposes, so you're talking about prospects," Professor Finkin said, "there are very strict rules on what the employer is required to do. It has to notify the applicant in a separate document, which is full of conspicuous language. They have to secure the written consent of the individual for the conduct of the background check, and so on."

When Sapp found out where the information came from, it was far from conspicuous.

"What I did not know was that a man from NFL security had been trailing me for several weeks. Who knew that the NFL had its own spies? I got to assume they were following the other top draft choices. The reports were accurate about one thing: Some nights I definitely did go to clubs. And it's true that most every club in Miami had dope dealers, pimps, and prostitutes hanging out, and I was dating two women who worked at one of those clubs. Those are the facts." [Sapp Attack]

"Inquiring of one's family, friends, contacts, that sort of thing would be covered by the rules on background checking," Professor Finkin said. "Physical observation, surveillance, for employment purposes would not be covered by federal or state statutes." And the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission states on its website, "If you are asking a company to provide an 'investigative report' - a report based on personal interviews concerning a person's character, general reputation, personal characteristics, and lifestyle - you must also tell the applicant or employee of his or her right to a description of the nature and scope of the investigation."

"The league does a lot of background work," Minnesota Vikings President and NFL Properties Chairman Roger Headrick told Jeff Benedict and Don Yeager, authors of the 1999 book Pros and Cons: The Criminals Who Play in the NFL. "We can go back to age twelve in the city where they have gone to school and get their criminal record. Occasionally you'll be able to get some records of things like substance abuse. That is transmitted through the medical side to the individual teams. So we know who is a drug-related risk. We also try to find out if they are related to any gang background. That is sometimes harder to find out, but you can check into where they lived, what kinds of cities they came from, particularly inner cities."

Each NFL team also employs its own security contractor. In 1993, as Benedict and Yeager wrote, Headrick's Vikings hired Steve Rollins, partially based off a suggestion from NFL Security headquarters. Soon after his hiring, Vikings defensive lineman Keith Millard crashed his car into a Hardee's restaurant parking lot. Rollins, a former St. Paul cop, "successfully discouraged the senior officer" from performing a breathalyzer test on Millard. Millard escaped without charges, which would have been the fourteenth drunk driving incident involving a Viking in just a four-year span. One former Vikings player told Benedict and Yeager it convinced the players 'this guy could cover up anything.'" [Pros and Cons]

Benedict and Yeager also write of Rollins depositing $5,000 in cash to a woman Vikings Head Coach Dennis Green had an affair with in 1992. Green and the anonymous woman had entered into a contract barring either of them from discussing an abortion that Green had paid for. When the woman threatened to sue for breach of contract, Rollins was dispatched with the money in an attempt to convince her to let it blow over. In 1995, Rollins assaulted a KMSP-TV cameraman, Dan Metcalfe, after Metcalfe refused to leave the Metrodome tunnel following a game. According to court papers, "Rollins grabbed Metcalfe by the collar of Metcalfe's shirt and hurled him to the ground." Rollins was disciplined by the team, but not fired. [Pros and Cons]

One former Vikings security official told Benedict and Yeager that Rollins managed to hold onto his job because he "knows more dirt on the Vikings than anyone. Everything ugly that has happened behind the scenes for the past seven years, he knows it. And if he were fired by Headrick, Rollins would spill it. And Headrick would never risk that. Rollins is untouchable." Headrick resigned his post in August of 1998, and according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Rollins didn't last another week: he was promptly fired for assisting Headrick in breaking and entering into his old office.&pfielddate-0=YMDdate&pparamsdate-0=date:B,E&ptextdate-0=1998&pfieldadvanced-0=&ptextadvanced-0=(%22Vikings%20continue%20staff%20changes%22)&xcalnumdocs=50&pperpage=25matches&psort=YMDdate:D&xcaluseweights=no)

Stories like these only scratch the surface of NFL Security's reach. In his book Alone in the Trenches: My Life as a Gay Man in the NFL, Esera Tuaolo writes of FBI agents warning him and his Green Bay Packers teammates of the "Beauty Queen Bandit," a man who would offer to set up players with beautiful women, bring a woman up to the player's room, drug his drink, and then take compromising photos to blackmail the player. Tuaolo also wrote, "The FBI came in during training camp to brief players. The agents warned us about rape. They said some of these girls, all they are looking for is a quick ride." When asked about preseason presentations from NFL Security, Packers public relations declined to comment.

These are just the stories easily dug up in the public record. Given the organization's 50 year history and massive ties to the FBI and CIA, as well as the mutual incentives to keep stories like Rollins' covered up, numerous examples of NFL Security missteps or illegal actions could be buried with little chance of being unearthed.

But these stories paint a clear picture, one of an NFL Security apparatus willing to do whatever it takes to make sure any information damaging to teams stays below the surface, even if that means hurting athletes or women around the team. The same facts also paint a picture of an NFL Security apparatus willing to ignore the law to find out whatever they need to find out and to cover up whatever they need to cover up. And they paint a picture of an NFL that worries more about being compromised than about protecting the players and families who make up the league.

Roger Goodell still maintains he didn't see the tape of Ray Rice punching his wife, a denial that flies in the face of mountains of evidence. At this point, it's time to move past the question of what Goodell saw in the Ray Rice case and when. It's time to ask what else Goodell and his brand police have covered up and how many abusers have avoided punishment; all in the name of Protecting the Shield.