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NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell pauses as he speaks during a news conference Friday, Sept. 19, 2014, in New York.Jason DeCrow/The Associated Press

There is an argument to be made that the modern sports event began with the 1757 execution of Robert-François Damiens, would-be assassin of Louis XV.

Up until that point, wealthy patrons sponsored sports spectacles. This was perhaps the first instance in which tickets were sold to live, unscripted 'entertainment.' Damiens was torn to pieces in a grisly pantomime involving hot pokers, axes and, after a good long while, a half-dozen plow horses. According to legend, his limbless torso was still alive when they lit it on fire.

Ads were posted and bleachers erected. Hawkers sold souvenirs. Kids sat on shoulders. One couple was injured falling out of a tree.

The rich rented apartments above the field of play. Among them was the randy memoirist Giacomo Casanova. "We had the courage to watch the dreadful sight for four hours," he recalled.

Despite that courage, Casanova admits to turning away during some of the more industrial processes. Two in his party continued to watch. He wondered why. "They told me, and I pretended to believe them, that their horror at the wretch's wickedness prevented them feeling that compassion which his unheard-of torments should have excited."

Morality is relative and mores change, but here's archival proof that the NFL's unprecedented crisis of conscience is neither unprecedented, nor is it existentially threatening. All that will come from the hand-wringing over off-field violence is a bolstering of the popularity of the on-field sort.

People get their thrills from sport in a variety of ways, and one of them involves the urge to watch people being punished while also feeling righteous about that desire.

We don't chop them up in the public square any more. But Casanova's gang would have been familiar with the emotional temperature of an NFL audience, and the ethical gymnastics necessary to get off on the violence while simultaneously disdaining it.

This is the same crowd that howls with delight when a receiver is nearly cleaved in half after coming over the middle for a high pass, then mournfully claps the poor bastard off the field when he's strapped to a golf cart.

The moment he goes up for the ball is the purest distillation of the appeal of football – watching a man put himself in a position of mortal risk.

And who, in that moment, is not happily anticipating his annihilation? No one. No one who watches on the regular. If the idea that he may now be badly injured bothered you, you wouldn't watch. In fact, you're here precisely because you enjoy the frisson created by the possibility of this potential outcome. We all are, even if we won't talk about it. If we weren't, we'd stop watching football and do something useful with our Sundays.

Then the impact, and the receiver hits the ground in chapters. He's hurt. Inevitably, you feel bad. Now, your shameful, quite-natural bloodlust must become someone else's fault. Why didn't he duck? Why did the quarterback drift that pass? Why did the tackler lead with his helmet? Why do these guys make so much more money than the rest of us? They know the risks.

In psychological terms, this is called "negative excitement." It's the reason we drink, the reason we feel bad about drinking and the reason we keep on drinking. It is the lifeblood of the NFL.

Over the past couple of years, it's got harder to maintain the distance necessary to properly appreciate another man's maiming. In the moment, it's fine. Someone peels them off the turf and hauls them away. Some never return. They're easy to forget.

But we've now seen too much of what happens afterward. The decline into dullness and despair; the broken bodies; the public regrets. Every soldier loves war until one of two things happen – you lose, or it ends. For your typical NFL fan, all this humanity is a serious buzz kill.

This year, there's been a lot of good news in that regard – Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson, Greg Hardy, Jonathan Dwyer. (Jonathan who? Never mind. Just throw him into the news cycle with the rest of them.)

Wife beaters. Child abusers. Excuse makers. Out-of-control millionaires. Instructive examples that make the rest of us feel better about ourselves because, because, as badly as we may screw things up from time to time, we aren't knocking our girlfriends unconscious on date night.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has also done yeoman's work for the cause, bumbling around like a man who's forgotten to put on his belt and is entirely concentrated on keeping his pants up.

The calculated ooze given off by Goodell as he tries to turn wife beating into a promotional opportunity complements the villainy of Rice and the rest of them.

When Goodell speaks, we tear our hair and demand he be fired. And then the TV ratings go up. Fans line up thousands deep to exchange their Ray Rice jerseys for other jerseys. This crisis isn't pushing people away from football. It's drawing them closer to it.

In some quarters, the players who've done wrong and the NFL and team officials who can do no right are being portrayed in opposition to one another – a sort of reactive classism.

But they aren't any different. Not to a fan. They're all in this together, messing up, making excuses, getting away with it and still becoming rich.

Those who would prefer to enjoy the game's base pleasures in a shame-free environment have therefore been let off the hook. This is still far and away the largest group of fans – the quiet majority who come for the art, and doesn't really care if the artist is a decent family man, or what happens to him.

Rice, Peterson, Goodell, et al. – that's who you see now when a receiver comes over the middle. This small group of miscreants has turned everyone who plays the game into the wretches whose wickedness prevents us from feeling the compassion their torments should excite.

For now at least, they've taken the guilt out of America's increasingly guilty pleasure.

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