Discussion for article #227527
The NFL’s credibility is not improving.
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The NFL unfortunately is full of thugs. Also, in all honesty, the NFL should not have a non-profit status.
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As Chris Rock so cleverly noticed----Rice wasn’t shitcanned because he beat up his wife.
He was shitcanned because a video was released that showed him beating up his wife.
The NFL saw only dollar signs when it looked at Rice.
Now the NFL is frantically trying to cover its corporate ass----I am reminded of a cat trying to cover shit on a marble floor.
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Mr. Goodell, please clean out your desk.
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I have never believed the BS put out by the NFL that the Commissioner didn’t see the video.
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This has taken a very ugly turn - the NFL went too light in the beginning - and now that there is egg on the NFL’s face - it begins to look like the NFL is punishing Ray Rice more for the video being released.
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Ruh-Roh Reorge
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Roger Goodell’s NFL HQ sure has a lot of problems keeping track of video evidence - first Bellicheck’s tapes from Spygate are destroyed, and now this…
For a league that can monitor dozens of camera angles sourced from every game in real time from an office right there on Park Avenue, this is beyond credible. And as Keith O. noted, ultimately irrelevant.
Go away, Roger. Just go away.
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Looks like Roger is going to have to find someone else to pay him $30M plus per year to do their bidding. Good luck with that Roger. You have no one to blame but yourself for this mess.
The level of incompetence it takes to make $30M a year in this country is scary.
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…and boom goes the dynamite.
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BOOM! That’s the sound a limb sometimes makes when it breaks. Too bad Roger took the NFL out on that limb.
It’s pretty maddening to me that so many people are being sucked into the whole “did Goodell see the video or didn’t he?” conversation.
In reality, it does not matter one iota whether he saw it previously or not. The fact is, all the TMZ video does is actually allow us to see what we ALREADY KNOW. We’ve already seen the original video from back in February showing Rice dragging his unconscious fiancee out of the elevator. We knew way back then that he had knocked her out cold. Moreover, after Rice’s arrest that night, the police report details exactly what happened. All of the facts of this case are not only public domain, but they’ve been available to Roger Goodell this entire time. We don’t actually need to see the video of Ray Rice delivering a left cross to the girl’s chin to know that he’s dead to rights in this case.
And that’s really the horrible aspect to everything that’s happened. Goodell’s insistence that the NFL did not have access to the tape is simply the commissioner deflecting the true issue at hand. It doesn’t matter whether or not he had access to the tape. He had all the facts and opted to do shockingly little about it…until the outcry backed him into a corner.
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Let’s not forget Nike and EA Sports who also only dropped Rice when the video surfaced.
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And they are pulling his Jerseys from the shelves and are offering rebates or exchanges for them. Rice is done in football that’s a given, now it’s on to Goodell and the Ravens. They knew because it’s been out since at least July, so they are blatantly lying or willfully playing stupid, neither works.
Now there are two more stories surfacing, one worse than Rice supposedly. This is much bigger than just Ray Rice punching his woman.
I see your point, but I also get that for a lot of folks hearing that a guy knocked his lady out is horrifying, seeing it is even far worse than they previously imagined. Personally, seeing his behavior afterwards also makes it very clear to me that this isn’t a one time thing, that it wasn’t something that happened in a drunken spur of the moment. It wasn’t nearly the mutual combat situation previously thought. So, I get why people are far more horrified and angry after seeing the video. I think a similar dynamic occurred with Chris Brown’s attack on Rhianna. Everyone agreed he’s an abusive asshole who’s terrible but that sentiment got turned up to 20 once people saw the images of her face. In other words, shit got real.
As for the NFL, the fact that they saw the tape and still handed down a mere two game suspension is what I think is angering folks. Without the video, one can imagine that maybe they believed Rice and maybe they had a talk with his then-fiance. Maybe they didn’t (though they clearly should’ve) realize the brutality of the situation. If they hadn’t seen the tape there was a lot of room for maybes. Not so much anymore.
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Interesting that no one seems to be looking at the Revel Casino (just closed, dumping the whole staff real recently) in all of this. The damning video from inside the elevator clearly belongs to the casino. I would not be surprised if this tape release isn’t related to someone’s attempt (successful or otherwise) to secure severance income.
The cover up is already falling apart. I’m sure Goodell and the Ravens never expected to be called out on it.
I think that Goodell should be gone just like Rice and the sooner the better. He has proven what he is made out of and is now a stain on the league and a scab on their attempts at women relations.
I’m not really sure what the appropriate penalty should be for the Ravens Org and the coach whom I watched deny the whole thing today. They are incredulous.
It’s best to air all of the dirty laundry at once, deal with it, make big improvements and move on. It’s not like the league’s or the sports reputation was all that great anyways.
Certainly there’s a legal component to the TMZ video which DOES implicate Ray Rice more than before. Although the original video makes it pretty clear that he had knocked her out in the elevator, it was not a smoking gun, per se. The new video absolutely is the very definition of a smoking gun.
The other component, though, remains the NFL’s handling of this case. There are only three plausible scenarios. 1. The NFL HAS had access to the TMZ video and is attempting to cover it up with spin. 2. The NFL could have gotten the video but specifically chose not to in order to preserve “plausible deniability.” 3. The NFL truly never did have or see the video until TMZ released it this week.
In my opinion, Goodell fails regardless of the truth. Obviously a cover-up would be horrible and the most unforgiving scenario. But scenarios two and three really aren’t much better for the league. Even if he hadn’t seen the new video, there was already a plethora of convincing evidence as to what happened that night. Between the original video, the police report, and the investigation launched by NFL investigators (who are mostly ex-cops), I really don’t think there is much room for “maybe’s.”
Regardless, Goodell had a chance to lead on this subject and he not only decided to punt, but he shanked it.
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While that may be true, he’s lucky he’s not in jail.