Pettiness kept Antonio Brown off at least one voter’s All-Pro ballot. Here’s why that’s wrong

Antonio Brown didn’t play in the last game of the season for the Steelers because he reportedly had a dispute with Ben Roethlisberger and skipped practice leading up to the final game. He was benched.

In reaction to the report, Peter King of NBC Sports publicly stated that he had taken Brown off of his list of All-Pro receivers. He couldn’t, in good conscience, vote for a player who quit on his team and mathematically sat out 6.25 percent of his team’s season.

King’s stance, especially for a man who voted for Tyreek Hill, shows exactly why the NFL’s system of handing out accolades is broken. Brown deserves the All-Pro votes he had earned.

King probably wasn’t the only voter who felt like the way he did towards Brown. The truth is that Brown is one of the best receivers in the league, and without this situation, he would have been on many All-Pro ballots. Which is to say, had he just been injured for the final game as first assumed, he likely would have gotten the votes; or perhaps if Mike Tomlin had benched him as some misguided tactical plan; or if the benching occurred for the first game of the season instead of the last. He had done more than enough to earn consideration — 104 receptions (ninth in the NFL) for 1,297 yards (11th) and 15 touchdowns (tops in the league).

It’s hard to excuse Brown’s actions leading up to him being benched — there are probably better ways to handle a coworker dispute. But dismissing his entire season because of those actions means that the idea that players awards — from the Pro Bowl, to All-Pro, to the Hall of Fame — are fair is a lie.

King showed just how inconsistent and skewed his moral compass is. For example, he supported consideration of Darren Sharper’s Hall of Fame candidacy by standing behind the idea of objectivity, saying essentially that a voter should not be a moral agent, but should focus on the athlete’s accomplishments on the field. Sharper, mind you, was sentenced to 20 years of prison in a drug and rape case.

It’s this type of reasoning that gets trotted out consistently to defend the employment of people like Hill, Reuben Foster, or Greg Hardy. The NFL and those who write about it often like to pretend that they are part of a closed system that only looks at what the athlete has done on the field.

Except, of course, when it doesn’t suit them. By applying his absurd definition of moral failure and taking away his vote for Brown, King admitted that his objectivity is not real.

Of course, Feeling may always be necessary evil in the NFL’s canonization process, and the voters are human and susceptible to personal biases like anyone else. But that doesn’t excuse naked vindictiveness. This was most evident with Terrell Owens, who had the resumé to be in the Hall of Fame, but had to wait a long time to overcome the negative perceptions of his character by those in power.

Brown’s case is a smaller-scale version of the T.O. problem. And the way players are treated matters.

The tangible losses of, say, not being named All-Pro — the bonuses and future negotiating power— are big. Even larger is how a player becomes part of the greater story of the league’s history. Awards are part of the process of immortalizing players. They exist to set markers that distinguish who was good and who will be remembered forever. Everyone can say that awards are pointless. At the same time, those people also largely agree that they want players they support to win them. Players care, because humans enjoy and need validation for their good work.

To take that validation away by drawing a line at arguing with teammates, but then hiding behind objectivity when it comes to truly significant issues like domestic violence and rape, is an abuse of power. It’s a retroactive punishment that shows that players’ legacies are largely at the mercy of people who can change the rules whenever they please.

The silly thing is, voting for Brown and criticizing his actions can exist in the same place. If King had simply leaned on precedent and claimed that Brown had done enough to deserve his place among the season’s best receivers, no one would have begrudged him for also disagreeing with the way Brown handled his dispute with the team.

Voters and the NFL need to reckon with this process because it makes a difference to players whose reputations are publicly litigated on a daily basis. If players can be scrutinized so harshly, we also need to be vigilant about scrutinizing the people who act as gatekeepers to players’ reputations. Anyone who would judge Antonio Brown more harshly than Darren Sharper shouldn’t have any say.