• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, February 19, 2016

Sports site SB Nation was forced to remove an article just a few hours after it was published Wednesday night amid a storm of criticism over its sympathetic portrayal of a convicted rapist.

The roughly 12,000-word story focused on Daniel Holtzclaw, the ex-police officer found guilty on 18 counts of sexual assaults against eight African-American women in Oklahoma City, including four counts of first-degree rape.

Holtzclaw was also a minor college football star when he played for Eastern Michigan University. The article by veteran sports journalist Jeff Arnold set out to investigate this little-known backstory to Holtzclaw’s crimes, in an effort to explain how a respected athlete became a serial rapist.

However, the story, titled “Who Is Daniel Hotzclaw?,” veered far off course into a rape apologia. Beginning with a lengthy passage exploring Holtzclaw’s feelings as the guilty verdicts were read out, and the suffering of his parents who “sat defenseless, unable to protect Daniel from harm,” the article seemed to portray Holtzclaw and his family as the victims, with scant attention to the women he raped.

After registering his former teammates’ disbelief that Holtzclaw could be capable of the crimes he committed, the central part of the article tells the story of his high school and college football career, with plenty of references to his selflessness, discipline and commitment.

Yet in a rare aside about the actual victims, the article casually notes “most… already had a history of run-ins with the police over drugs or prostitution.” Only later, did it explain that Holtzclaw chose victims with records because they were more vulnerable and therefore less likely to report the abuse.

The article doesn’t deny outright that Holtzclaw is a rapist. Still, the sheer amount of attention paid to his football career and apparently good character  begins to strike the reader as odd — especially since it ultimately provides no real insight into the question it sets out to answer.

At one point, Arnold speculates that Holtzclaw became “unhinged” because leaving college football and his NFL aspirations behind was a disappointing step down for him. This is hardly convincing or persuasive, since tens of thousands of college athletes with dreams of going pro make the same transition without inflicting so much collateral damage.

He also notes that doctors believe brain trauma caused by football can lead to anger and aggression, but admits “there is no real way to determine if Holtzclaw is affected.”

More troubling, while not denying his guilt, the article displays a strange ambiguity on the subject. A description of his facial expression during the sentencing is typical: “For those who believed in Holtzclaw’s innocence, his face displayed well-earned, righteous anger. For those who agreed with the court and believed in Holtzclaw’s guilt, it seemed the face of a man who was fully capable of the crimes he was convicted of committing.”

It concludes on a similar note: “Pending an improbable successful appeal, everything he had worked for was now gone, likely never to be recovered, ever again. Recovery, if there is any, appears to be something deserved only by the victims of a man whose belief in his innocence will apparently be, like the way he once pursued his dream of playing in the NFL, unrelenting, despite all evidence to the contrary.”

SB Nation removed the article (although an archived version can still be read here) and apologized, with editorial director Spencer Hall admitting: “There is no qualification: It was a complete failure.” Hall added: “The publication of this story represents a complete breakdown of a part of the editorial process at SB Nation. There were objections by senior editorial staff that went unheeded. It was tone-deaf, insensitive to the victims of sexual assault and rape, and wrongheaded in approach and execution.”