If the National Football League (NFL) wants to maintain any credibility, it needs to fire or suspend Commissioner Roger Goodell. Should they choose the latter, it should be for at least as long as Goodell suspended Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice, because Goodell committed the same crime.
No, Goodell did not punch his wife and drag her unconscious from an Atlantic City elevator. That was never the crime for which he suspended Rice. Punishing Rice for domestic violence was the job of the Atlantic City District Attorney, his wife and his conscience. Maybe the public.
Goodell’s role was to punish Rice for making the NFL look bad. Any aspersions to the contrary were contradicted by the punishment. In an NFL where positive drug tests can lead to yearlong suspensions, the charges against Rice and the first video of him dragging his unconscious fiancée out of an elevator warranted a two game suspension in Goodell’s opinion.
That decision was so widely panned that Goodell was forced to save face by seeking the counsel of women’s groups and other experts. He then promised harsher punishments for domestic violence going forward, though he wouldn’t reopen Rice’s case. Not until video emerged of Rice punching his fiancée in the elevator. It’s not clear how else Goodell thought she became unconscious, but seeing it on video meant Rice’s punishment could be revisited.
As the conversation continued, the nation learned about Carolina Panthers defensive end Greg Hardy, who had been convicted of domestic violence by a judge, but was playing pending an appeal to a jury. Hardy was deactivated by this team for last Sunday’s game, as was Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Petersen after he was indicted on a charge of reckless or negligent injury to a child.
By Monday evening, reports had Rice planning to appeal his suspension and possibly his release, Petersen was reinstated by the Vikings while rumors of a second charge swirled, and the Panthers were getting more information before any further decisions on Hardy. Meanwhile, the NFL called in former FBI Director Robert Mueller to investigate itself and answer reports that it had access to the second Rice video all along. Goodell felt the need to create a new NFL vice president of social responsibility, to be assumed by Anna Isaacson, the current vice president for community relations and philanthropy.
I don’t know if NFL penalties should come before or after trial(s), when they should be subject to further review and whether video of a punch should matter when we already saw the results of the knockout blow. But I know it has to be consistent. Goodell’s unilateral, ever-changing and bizarrely stratified punishments have left players, owners and fans with no idea what the NFL stands for other than profit. That can’t be the message even if it’s the truth. If Isaacson really wants to promote social responsibility and community relations, she will tell the NFL owners what the past few weeks have made painfully obvious: Goodell has made them rich, but he is now a media liability and he should be suspended indefinitely. He can always appeal.
