The National Football league is expected to institute a rule penalizing players who use the N-word on the field, ESPN reported Saturday.
An organization that monitors diversity in the NFL, the Fritz Pollard Alliance, anticipates that at an owners’ meeting next month the league’s competition committee will enact a rule penalizing players 15 yards for using the racial slur.
Fritz Pollard Alliance head John Wooten told CBS Sports that he would be “shocked” if the committee didn’t adopt the rule.
“”We want this word to be policed from the parking lot to the equipment room to the locker room,” Wooten said. “Secretaries, PR people, whoever, we want it eliminated completely and want it policed everywhere.”
The general manager of the Baltimore Ravens, Ozzie Newsome, sits on the league’s competition committee and acknowledged the committee had also discussed the possibility of other offensive language, including homophobic slurs, falling under a new rule.
“We did talk about it, I’m sure that you saw near the end of the year
that Fritz Pollard (Alliance) came out very strong with the message
that the league needs to do something about the language on the field,”
he said, as quoted by ESPN.
This post has been updated.
