This is from a Deadspin article yesterday: It is insane because Roger Goodell met with Janay Rice in a crowded conference room. It was Janay and six men, including Goodell, Ravens brass, two NFL executives, and the man who hit her. Any counselor, cop, or attorney experienced in domestic violence issues could have and should have told the NFL that victims will often blame themselves, defend their abusers, and even change their stories, all in the name of protecting the man they love. The NFL’s judiciary should have disregarded anything Janay Rice told them, especially anything she said while sitting next to Ray Rice and five other men with vested interests in Ray Rice not getting in trouble.
Read that again, then read it again and try to figure out how a bunch of really intelligent men got together and decided the best course of action in a domestic abuse situation was to do the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to do in a domestic abuse situation. Roger Goodell has literally tripped over his ignorance in this situation. It seems he thought he could throw a tarp over this mess and people would just forget that it ever happened. Like when you’re a child and you make a mess, you cover it with a blanket hoping that as long as your parent’s can’t see it, it never happened. The truth is, we all saw the mess Goodell created months ago when he handed down a weak 2-game suspension for “whatever it was that happened in that elevator.” We all had a pretty good idea of what had happened but Goodell led us to believe that there was no smoking gun, no additional tape, NO IDEA WHAT HAD HAPPENED. The truth of the matter is we don’t really know. I’m comfortable saying that even though what I really want to write is Roger Goodell has known about the tape since April and has tried to cover it up.
Roger Goodell has used the worst possible judgment in running the NFL and this Ray Rice fiasco has highlighted the fact that he may not even be qualified for the job. He has simply failed to do his job well. He has put a league, a group of individuals, above everything else. He’s tried to cover up things and incidents so that his league could continue to move forward printing its own money and acting like nothing else matters. For the most part, he’s succeeded. He just really, really messed things up this time. As Tiki Barber said on TBD in the AM a few days ago, had Goodell handed down a 10 game suspension for Rice we probably wouldn’t even be talking about this. Rice would be an afterthought to this season. But because Goodell didn’t act accordingly AND immediately after seeing the initial video, we questioned his intentions.
I hope for everyone’s sake Roger Goodell announces his resignation, apologizes for his mistakes and slinks away to some law firm where he’ll make $5 million a year instead of $44 million. He shouldn’t be running the NFL because honestly, no one is going to trust him or believe him the next time something happens like this, and believe me, things like this are going to happen. It’s time for the NFL to start fresh with a new person in charge of the most powerful professional sports league in America.
