Even if you don't pay attention to the NFL, you're more than likely well aware of the current situation involving former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice. A video of Rice knocking out his then-fiancée, now wife Janay Palmer in an Atlantic City casino elevator in February surfaced on Monday courtesy of TMZ. Rice had previously been suspended two games for the incident in July, but once the video surfaced on Monday, the Baltimore Ravens terminated his contract immediately and the NFL suspended Rice indefinitely. Without further knowledge of the situation, it seems like the NFL and the Ravens acted swiftly and handed Rice an appropriately harsh punishment. However, any fan that's fully immersed in the NFL, realizes just how bad Rodger Goodell and the Ravens organization screwed up the handling of this situation and how truly pathetic their attempt to cover their asses is.
Goodell is someone I've been critical of for quite some time. Since he took over as commissioner in 2007, the league has taken a pretty significant dive in quality. Goodell has put an insane emphasis on cutting down recreational drug use amongst players and instituting rule changes that only benefit the offense and make physical, smashmouth play all but impossible. Goodell's become known for his harsh punishments and zero-tolerance polices, doling out suspensions at will to anyone that violated the rules. Goodell's history of being a stickler makes his intial soft ruling in the Rice case extremely ironic. This was the first time he's been dealt a case that called for serious discipline and he hands out a suspension that's less than what guys like Josh Gordon (one-year suspension) and Wes Welker (four games) got for testing positive for marijuana and MDMA respectively. Even without the visual confirmation of Rice knocking out his wife that this week's TMZ video provided, there was enough evidence to suspend Rice indefinitely back in February. The trusty folks at TMZ gained access to a video of Rice dragging an unconscious Palmer out of the casino elevator a mere four days after days the incident took place and a number of eye-witnesses saw them hitting one another prior to getting on the elevator. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what happened on that elevator yet Goodell still felt like a two-game suspension was sufficient enough. The kicker in all of this is that everyone knows Goodell saw this damning video of Rice knocking out Palmer that caused him to dole out the indefinite suspension well before it was leaked to the public on Monday. Peter King of Sports Illustrated and Chris Mortensen of ESPN wrote articles describing the video in full detail back in July and just yesterday, a law enforcement official told the Associated Press that he gave the NFL the tape in April.
Despite the wave of additional evidence that all but confirms Goodell and other NFL officials saw the video long before this week, Goodell continues to play dumb with the media. All week long, Goodell has been trying to convince the general public that he knew nothing of this tape prior to the TMZ leak with absolutely no success. His interview with CBS News that aired Wednesday morning was cringe-worthy to say the least. The interviewer was clearly coached to pitch Goodell's softball questions yet he still looked flustered and you could tell he wasn't even buying the horseshit that was flying out of his mouth. It's no coincidence that Goodell gave his exclusive interview to CBS. CBS is the NFL's top partner and is premiering the league's 2014 Thursday Night football series tonight. In a culture that's more media-saavy than ever, it's honestly comical that the Goodell thought he could get this detail past the audience. The American people aren't nearly as dumb as Goodell thinks they are and if Goodell thinks a majority of the population is falling for his bullshit, face-saving PR tour; he's sorely mistaken.
The Goodell bullshit tour started a couple of weeks when he unveiled a new domestic abuse policy. The policy states the any first time offender of the domestic abuse policy will be suspended for six games and any repeat offender is subject to a lifetime ban. While it's great that there is a policy in place to punish any player who commits domestic abuse, the motives behind it are completely wrong. This policy was only put into place because Goodell faced a strong wall of backlash and didn't want to travel down that road again. Goodell's previous actions have proved that he doesn't take domestic abuse seriously. He only cares about his and the league's image, and this policy was only created to try and salvage his reputation in the court of public opinion. The loose nature of this policy is already at work as there is currently two players- Panthers defensive end Greg Hardy and 49ers defensive end Ray McDonald- have been arrested for domestic abuse in the past few months and have not yet faced any discipline from the league. The McDonald incident admittedly is loaded with sketchy details and he very well could end up being innocent, but Hardy was found guilty of assaulting and threatening to kill his ex-girlfriend in July, yet neither the league or the Panthers have suspended him. Both McDonald and Hardy played in last week's season opener and barring any sudden changes, will be playing once again this Sunday.
While Goodell and his colleagues in the league office deserve a majority of the blame for the downplaying of the domestic violence case against Rice, The Ravens certainly played their role. Where the NFL flexed their corruption muscles trying to cover up their mistakes in their handling of the Rice situation, The Ravens spent the 2014 offseason making it seem like Rice was the victim in this case. While the whole team and front office was publicly supporting him and sweeping the whole incident under the rung, there was no greater form of ignorance to the situation than from the Ravens' PR department. Right after Rice received his two-game suspension from the league, Ravens Vice President of Public Relations Kevin Byrne wrote a blog post on the official team site entitled "I Like Ray Rice" (which can be read here: http://www.baltimoreravens.com/news/article-1/Byrne-Identity-I-Like-Ray-Rice/f618f957-e03f-4fc6-919e-638552b14c2b) in which he professes his love for Rice and essentially defends his actions and integrity as a human being. This piece is legitimately disgusting to read. I understand that it's the job of a PR guy to do damage control and protect the image of this organization, but this was just ridiculous. This is a piece of propaganda that not only wants the reader to forget about the case, but manages to shift the blame away from Rice completely. It's fine if people in the Ravens front office have a positive opinion of Rice outside of this case, but to write off his actions as a non-issue is despicable. There was only one victim here and her name is Janay Palmer. Rice is not in a position to be defended by anyone. His contributions on the football field and to the Baltimore community at-large are irrelevant in this situation- he committed a violent act against a woman that just can't be excused no matter how hard the Ravens or anyone else in the league tries.
What makes this Ravens actions with Rice that much worse is the fact that this isn't the first time they've had one of their players involved in a major criminal case. Inside linebacker Ray Lewis was linked to a 2000 murder outside of an Atlanta nightclub after two large groups of people- including Lewis and his entourage- got into a scuffle that resulted in the stabbing deaths of two men. The Lewis case may be different as there was no concrete evidence that proved Lewis committed the murder, but just like they did with Rice, the team stood behind him and didn't discipline him in anyway during the legal proceedings. The Ravens organization has been one of the most successful organizations on-the-field since their inception in 1996, but they are arguably the worst franchise in the league at handling adversity and reprimanding players that break the law.
Goodell and the Ravens should be absolutely ashamed of the way they handled this situation. They completely downplayed the severity of domestic abuse and will continue to lie about their respective stances to protect the "integrity" of the league. There is nothing that can be said or done that will fix the injustices the league has committed since the initial video of Rice dragging Palmer out of the elevator surfaced in February. Domestic violence is one of the most horrible things one human being to another, and the NFL needs to start channeling their energy towards this issue instead of bringing the hammer down on guys that smoke weed. As much as I would love to see Goodell and the Ravens brass be fired because of this, I know the odds of that happening are pretty much zero. Goodell and the Ravens' front office have too much power to be outright ousted, which means nothing will be done to prevent something like this from happening again in the future. Rice will eventually be forgiven by the general public and return to the football field, but the appalling indifference and gross negligence the NFL showed during the Rice case will never be forgotten.
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