Jovan Belcher, a reserve linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs, committed suicide this morning in the parking lot of Arrowhead Stadium, the Chiefs’ home facility.
Kansas City police spokesman said Belcher killed himself following an altercation at his girlfriend’s house that resulted in her being shot several times.
Before turning the gun on himself, the player thanked Chiefs general manager Scott Pioli and Romeo Crennel for all they had done for him, Snapp said.
Authorities received a call Saturday morning from a woman who said her daughter had been shot multiple times at a residence about five miles away from the Arrowhead complex. Snapp said a call was then received from the Chiefs’ facility.
Upon arriving, Snapp said that police witnessed a black male in a car with a handgun to his head talking to two Chiefs officials. That’s when police heard a gunshot. Arrowhead Stadium has been lockdown since about 8 a.m.
“We can confirm that there was an incident at Arrowhead earlier this morning,” the Chiefs said in a statement. “We are cooperating with authorities in their investigation.”
Kansas City is scheduled to host the Carolina Panthers on Sunday. The league has informed the Panthers to travel as scheduled because the game is going on as scheduled.
Actually, the NFL is still debating whether to play the game or not:
The Chiefs (1-10) are scheduled to play at Arrowhead Stadium Sunday at noon CT, against the Carolina Panthers (3-8). One league source in the NFL office said officials were still trying to decide Saturday morning whether the game will be played on Sunday as scheduled. He said his guess was that the game would not be postponed or canceled, due to the complications of when to re-schedule the game in the remaining weeks of the season, or how a cancellation might affect the other 30 teams in the league in terms of competitive fairness.
“There is a ripple effect,” the source said. “It’s not simply two teams affected here. I’m not sure in recent history we’ve ever just canceled a game. But what’s under consideration are all the factors involved if they don’t play, when do they play? It’s a pretty tight schedule to try and make a game up at some later point. These things have to be thought through. Nobody wants to play a football game right now if you’re a Kansas City Chief, but what does that do to the other 30 teams? It gets a little complicated from a schedule standpoint and a competitive standpoint.
The league source said the NFL did not feel it was mandatory to make a decison in regards to the game before Carolina boarded its mid-day flight to Kansas City. “If the Panthers have to fly back from Kansas City without having played the game, it’s not that big of an issue to deal with,” the source said. “We’d rather take the time to think through all the ramifications.”
While all NFL players pride themselves on their professionalism, it is hard to imagine how Chiefs players will be able to make a competitive game of the contest tomorrow. But it is equally hard to see how the NFL could reschedule the game for later in the week, especially since the Chiefs have a game next Sunday as well and the competition would suffer if the team only had a couple of days preparation.
It seems probable that in the interest of the 30 other NFL teams, the show will go on at Arrowhead tomorrow.
I’d like the payers and NFL to remember the games are entertainment, a distraction from life. Sometimes, professionalism demands the show go on.
This incident might be a tragedy, but not one for the community, nor one apparently that involves a wrong being done to an NFL payer, but one perhaps done by one (I speak of the girlfriend shooting). It would send the wrong message to cancel the game because someone who might have committed a crime shot himself rather than face prison and his teammates were more concerned about honoring that than providing a distraction in hard economic times for a fan base that for many are possibly perennially just one paycheck away from true failure.
Sometimes it is wrong to play after a tragedy. Sometimes it isn’t. The Bears faced the Packers the week after Pearl Harbor.
The show must go on.
“for a fan base that for many are possibly perennially just one paycheck away from true failure.”
“of whom many” not “that for any”. Apologies.
You know, for some reason I got it in my head this happened earlier this week or yesterday. Occuring this morning is a slightly different story–one should not be blithe to tragedy and just go on as if nothing happened, but neither should one be constantly half-masting everything and going on emoting jags at the drop of a hat. Too self-indulgent, too soft in a world that will see more tragedy yet.
We all die, and the world goes on. It has too.
What one should want to do is feel a desire to not do the game, and then, having with that emotion paid appropriate rememberence, having proven that you are not some mere animal but are instead human and feel something when another human dies, then go on. We all die, and not everything needs a stoppage of the world when it happens. It is the thought that counts.
As I thought about this more–if it happened tomorrow morning, I don’t think there is a question you would have gone on with the game that afternoon–too many people in transit, not important enough to cancel everything (you wouldn’t for a traffic accident), you can grieve tomorrow, that kind of thing. And if it happened on Friday–you had Saturday, so by Sunday it would be time to start facing life again. So the question is Saturday.
So I guess what I really think is that you should feel an urge to mourn the day after, once it (mortality) has had time to settle in–you should honor that by mourning–but you don’t have to stop everything if it was not something worth stopping everything for. Move on and enjoy the time you have on Earth, for it is, for a while longer, limited.
They are not called the “Monsters of the Midway” for no reason.
Beginning with the days of Vince Lombardi and his view of football as a collision sport, professional football has evolved into a game that prizes violence above all other things.
Once a game that taught the manly virtues, it has become an on-field abattoir, populated by drug fueled psychopaths. That the NFL is such huge business and such an important American cultural institution says volumes about the people who follow it and live for Sundays because of it.
Blood sports in the arena to redirect the attention of the population from the banality and evil of their masters. When did that ever happen before?
(Write your own)
Why would you consider this relevant, significant or important enough to write about?
IMHO, the only thing surprising is that something like this (in general, no reference to Belcher) took so long to happen.
Look at what the Dallas Cowboys became. At one time, under Landry, they truly earned the nickname “America’s Team”. By the mid/late Nineties, the behavior of the team had become so vile, even murderous, that management hired Calvin Hill as a mentor on ethics and morality.
Professionalism? … I think not. There will be copycats. It’s what pampered little boys do.