Moving on from Ray Rice Will Test NFL, Roger Goodell and Fans Alike

The Ray Rice saga is the Rorschach test of sports news. 

You know the Rorschach test—the ink blots that look like whatever your deeper subconscious is really thinking about at the given moment. It's proof that there's little in terms of objective reality that can measure up to the subjective perception that our minds create. Biases—both public and internal—shape the way we absorb and react to events. 

If one is reading this story, it's likely the crimes of Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice against his then-fiancee/now-wife Janay (Palmer) Rice need no introduction. In short, Rice knocked his wife unconscious in an elevator at the now-closed Revel Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Videotape from outside the elevator showed Rice dragging his unconscious wife out of the elevator.

At first, both were charged with assault (more on that nonsense later), but charges against Janay were dropped and charges against Rice were elevated to "aggravated assault."

When the NFL finally disciplined Rice, it did so with a laughably inadequate two games, eventually leading to public outcry and then a new NFL domestic violence policy. On September 8, TMZ released a full video (warning: link contains graphic violence) of what happened inside the elevator, which led to more outcry and then an indefinite suspension along with Rice's release from the Ravens. 

Everyone will view this story in their own unique way. Some have commented through the prism of someone who has been a victim of domestic violence. Others have commented as friends of Rice or fans of the Ravens. Many see this as proof of athlete "thuggery," while others see the moral of the story as a warning against the unchecked power of the rich and the famous...especially a multibillion-dollar business like the NFL. 

All that said, it's time to take a step back and examine where we—the NFL, fans, media—can go as we move forward. Maybe, just maybe, we can find some objective truths to agree on and move toward events like this never, ever, happening again. 

NFL and Our Culture Need to Take Domestic Violence More Seriously

Nick Wass/Associated Press

If we're searching for one immutable rule in all of this, this is clear: Men should not hit women, period. 

Yes, I know, we can sit here and stretch even that truth to the fullest extent: But what if she has a gun? What if it's protecting someone else? What if she's threatening to...etc, etc, etc. To me, though, those are insane hypotheticals to attach to such a clear maxim that should receive the fullest acceptance. 

Time and again, though, men in our culture feel the need to hit women. 

It's sad, and everyone reading this should do everything within their power—within their own lives and homes and in the broader context of society—to teach this simple truth to make sure these crimes never happen again. 

Maybe that's idealist: A world completely devoid of any domestic violence? How absurd! 

But isn't that a world you'd like to live in?

As much as us average joes have within our ability to lead and contribute on important issues like this, how much more so for the NFL? The league and its 32 teams are a massive industry with thousands of employees and some of the highest visibility of any brand in the entire world. 

We can debate whether the NFL has been a good source for quality social change and whether it's wise to look to the NFL and its athletes as some sort of moral compass, but the fact of the matter is that it's in a position where its massive influence also carries some impetus to action. 

Heavy is the head that wears the crown...

With great power comes great responsibility...

The NFL continuing to shirk that responsibility, or acting on it in such an ignorant and impetuous manner, is a little bit like when former NBA star/current Turner analyst Charles Barkley once claimed, "I'm not a role model." 

The truth of the matter is that public figures become role models whether they like it or not. The NFL and its players have the ability to affect massive positive change in the world and too often are found wanting. 

Instead of leading on domestic violence, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is woefully behind the times.

Sadly, we're at the point where we shouldn't expect much more. 

Let's start at the very beginning: First, the Atlantic County prosecutor pressed charges against Janay Rice. They eventually dropped them, yes, but at what point does it make logical sense that the unconscious woman assaulted—actually assaulted, as in put the other person in physical danger—an NFL athlete?

They treated this instance of domestic violence like a lazy parent treats a fight in the other room: "I don't know what happened, so you're both grounded!"

Then, Rice's attorney, Michael Diamondstein, (the morally questionable man that he is) held out a ton of hypotheticals about the case, insinuating that Janay could have done any number of things that make Rice's knockout punch somehow more palatable. 

First, no...no, just no. 

It certainly seems as though Mr. Diamondstein had the tape of the incident in the elevator. This man looked at an abuse victim, unconscious on the floor with his client (showing little to no remorse) towering over her like he had just run over a cornerback, and then Mr. Diamondstein decided to paint her as an instigator and intimate his client deserved less of our public derision. 

This happened. 

Let's not pretend the Ravens are entirely innocent in their part of this matter. Early on in the process, the team was far more interested in painting Rice as a good man and making sure everyone knew their opinion that this was just a one-time occurrence. 

"

The @Ravens get NO points for finally doing what they did today w/ Rice. Y'all waged a "Rice is a nice guy" campaign all off season.

— Jessica W. Luther (@scATX) September 8, 2014"

Meanwhile, they dropped their own internal investigation the moment Rice's charges were elevated to aggravated assault. But they continued their relentless PR push of Rice and tone-deaf insistence that he was some sort of feel-good story long before any actual discipline or justice had been doled out. 

Screenshot of BaltimoreRavens.com

It's sick. 

It would be even more shocking if it weren't par for the course. 

I appreciate our American system of justice. Innocent until proven guilty is a pretty good ideal to live by, and I wish it happened more in the court of public opinion. The downside, of course, is that it puts the burden of proof on domestic violence victims who so often don't have the benefit of cameras to catch the violent acts of their supposed loved ones. 

The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence reports that, "one in every four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime." It also, sadly, reports that, "most cases of domestic violence are never reported to the police."

Why?

Fear, yes, but part of the problem is also the woeful response to domestic violence that law enforcement has historically showcased. The Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse puts it this way:

"

Historically, police and prosecutors have viewed battering as a family problem. The criminal justice system created a figurative "curtain of privacy" to shield husbands who beat their wives from public view, in the belief that the parties should be left to work out their "differences" privately. 

"

Those are sickening, disturbing thoughts—that our culture once thought that way and that those entrusted to serve and protect basically served the needs of abusers over victims and protected their supposed innocence over the health and well-being of people who needed protection so badly. 

Don't pretend the same didn't happen here, and don't pretend it's not happening all over this country today.

Also, don't pretend the NFL hasn't been and continues to be part of the problem. 

Goodell May Not Lose His Job, But He Should Lose Part of It

John Raoux/Associated Press

What right does Goodell have to preside over these cases any longer?

Right now, the NFL has two major cases of domestic violence on his desk. San Francisco 49ers lineman Ray McDonald was accused of violence against his fiancee at a party in which other 49ers were in attendance. Carolina Panthers defensive end Greg Hardy has already been found guilty of two counts of domestic violence and is awaiting appeal. 

Both men played in Week 1.

I understand the thought process behind McDonald playing. It speaks toward the NFL and the 49ers respecting the due process of the legal system (remember: innocent until proven guilty). Yet I also believe it might send a stronger statement to suspend a player while those proceedings play out. 

There's no excuse for a lack of action on Hardy, however, and it's a bright, shining neon highlight on the fact that Goodell is so inept at dealing with this issue. He was found guilty. Due process, to this point, has played out. Appeals (and subsequent appeals upward) can last months and years.

The NFL will suspend a player like Ben Roethlisberger without charges and would likely suspend a player for marijuana usage on little more than an anonymous tip, but it's awaiting appeal, here?

What in the world?

Listen to some of the testimony in the Hardy case, per The Associated Press (via ESPN.com):

"

After nearly 11 hours of hearing testimony, [Judge Rebecca] Thorn-Tin told a somber Hardy that "the court is entirely convinced Hardy is guilty of assault on a female and communicating threats."

Earlier in the morning the accuser testified that she was assaulted by Hardy at his apartment after a night of drinking. She also said Hardy threatened to kill her and put his hands around her neck.

"He looked me in my eyes and he told me he was going to kill me," said the accuser, a 24-year-old cocktail waitress in downtown Charlotte. "I was so scared I wanted to die. When he loosened his grip slightly, I said just, `Do it. Kill me.'"

"

The person whom a court of law said did those things to that woman played in Week 1. 

Really. 

That happened. 

Worse yet, Hardy's sentence was only 18 months probation and his 60-day jail time was suspended. So, in reality, Hardy wasn't really punished in any meaningful way by the court, nor—to this point—by the NFL. 

Again, I'm sensitive to the fact that appeals are important. Even within NFL circles, we can point to cases like onetime superstar college recruit Brian Banks, who was falsely accused and convicted. Truthfully, I can't sit here on one hand and point out the glaring faults of our justice system and then pretend like they don't get things wrong the other way as well. 

Hardy deserves his appeal, but his guilty verdict means that he no longer deserves the NFL's benefit of the doubt. 

How can we expect Goodell to get Hardy's discipline right when he got Rice's so wrong, even admittedly so?

Facts are still sketchy about what exactly Goodell knew and what he saw as well as when he knew and saw those things. The Associated Press, in the tweet above, is reporting that Goodell and the league has known for some time. The league, of course, has already denied this, via the AP. 

Those discussions—reasonable and important though they may be—are really a red herring in the crux of the matter. 

Goodell should not have needed a video to do the right thing!

Perhaps worse yet, when Goodell talked to Janay Rice about what happened in that elevator, he broke every single logical and stated rule of talking to a victim of abuse. He let Ray Rice be in the room! That's insanity. That is almost everything wrong with Goodell's tenure as commissioner in a nutshell.  

It isn't just Rice, either. Goodell has a long history of getting domestic violence wrong. FiveThirtyEightSports compiled the many cases and presented fantastic evidence showing that Goodell has been consistently light, uneven and altogether blind to the issue of domestic violence within his league. 

How is Goodell able to be so wrong on this issue time and time again?

Here's a less hypothetical question: Why does he still have the ability to be solely responsible for all NFL discipline? Goodell is the judge, jury and executioner of the NFL discipline process and has shown to be nearly incapable of performing that task with any credibility. Worse yet, he's also the appeals officer (or appoints one). So not only does the initial punishment run through him, but so does the appeal. 

Who in their right mind thought that was a good idea?

The NFLPA clearly doesn't, but it was able to do nothing to stop the process from continuing on as planned during the last collective bargaining agreement negotiations. While many—like the National Organization of Women, via ESPN—have called for Goodell to step down, that seems unlikely to happen as long as the NFL is still making money hand over fist. 

At the very least, Goodell should voluntarily relinquish his role as sole arbiter of discipline for NFL players. He should focus more on the advancement of the game and let someone more qualified than he has proved to be handle "protecting the shield."

If Goodell doesn't give that power up on his own, the owners should do the right thing and take it from him. A public outcry forced the NFL to do the right thing about Rice, so maybe it can have the same effect for Goodell.

When Is Enough, Enough?

Gail Burton/Associated Press

I hope we're all on the same page, so far. 

The public outcry against Rice, the league and the Ravens was good. It forced justice to be done in this matter. It moved a mighty ship of an organization with the united voice of thousands of very righteously angry people. 

The outcry was great. 

Now, let me tell you why it was also horrible. 

Don't let me lose you now. 

Janay Rice—remember, the victim in all this...the one whose well-being we're supposed to care about—released a statement via her Instagram account essentially pointing a finger at the media and expressing her desire for this to all go away. 

That is her right. 

There is room, logically, to understand how this all has very positive and very negative consequences.

Justice was done for Rice, yes. Hopefully, the fact that justice was done will both curb this behavior elsewhere (Rice, other NFL players and men everywhere...hopefully) and empower the victims of abuse to report those crimes without fear of them being swept under the rug. 

However, there's also the concept of revictimization and the fact that Janay Rice clearly feels as if that happened here. Dave Zirin of The Nation has done fantastic work on this from the beginning. Here's what he had to say:

"

The one question they did not glaringly ask is, How will Janay Rice react to the release of the tape? The absence of concern for Janay Rice—in the press, on social media, among my own colleagues—is the most disheartening part of this entire ordeal.

"

And, later in the piece:

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There is no thought given to restorative justice. Only how do we further punish, impoverish and crowd our prisons. As for Janay Rice, she has of course been standing with Ray Rice, even marrying him after the incident. I have no doubt that there are issues there, but they become our damn business only if Janay Rice wants them to be our damn business. I will ask again: What does Janay Rice want, and shouldn’t that matter? If it doesn’t matter, all we are doing is re-victimizing this person one click at a time.

"

This goes back to the point made earlier about how Goodell shouldn't have needed to see this video to do what is right. Along those same lines, the person who leaked this video to TMZ and the website itself shouldn't have had to leak this video for fortune, notoriety or clicks. 

Let's take this a little closer to home. 

I shouldn't have needed to see this video to be as outraged as I am, neither should you. For me, it was the first thing I saw on the morning it was released and I was sick to my stomach—far sicker than I was when I initially heard about the incident and even sicker than when I saw the initial dragging video. 

Where was Goodell's outrage? How about: Where was my outrage and where was yours?

This is important to the issue here, and it's part of the problem. 

Did anyone ask Janay Rice what she thought about the video being released to the public?

Does a victim deserve less respect of her choices and her feelings?

Case in point: Andrea Peyser of The New York Post called on Janay Rice to divorce her husband today, saying:

"

But just when it seemed that Rice was destined for a career as a sneaker salesman — if he even could get that kind of job — Janay Rice had his back.

She needs to break the vise-like grip this character has on her—before it’s too late.

"

How in the world is that any of Pyser's business? 

There is room in the periphery of this discussion for the very real statistics of abuse. The National Institute of Justice reports that:

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Depending on how reabuse is measured, over what period of time, and what countermeasures either the victim (e.g., getting a protective order or going into hiding) or the criminal justice system takes (arresting or locking up the abuser), a hard core of approximately one-third of abusers will reabuse in the short run, and more will reabuse in the long run.

"

There's value in holding a spotlight up to statistics like that, but not if the entire point of doing so is to shame Janay Rice into making a decision whether or not that's actually the decision she wants to make.

We can go on and on about the emotional and psychological impact of abuse. The #WhyILeft and #WhyIStayed hashtags went in-depth on the tremendous toll it takes on an abused woman and the remarkable courage it takes to leave an abuser.

Yet, none of those stories are Janay Rice's story.

We don't know Janay Rice's story.

She doesn't want to tell us her story—certainly not yet, maybe not ever.

We can have our opinions about what Janay Rice should do, but we should also keep those opinions to ourselves. She is the victim here and does not deserve to have the hen-clucks of a thousand busybodies try to remove her ability to make her own choices through their constant coercion and derision.  

It is almost as if the rage against the continued Rice marriage is a projection of our culture's lack of outrage for every other domestic abuse. If only we can split these two up and make her see the light, the Lifetime movie can finally have a happy ending! 

What if Janay Rice's "happily ever after" actually involves staying married to Ray Rice, him being truly contrite for his heinous action and never, ever, ever doing such a thing ever again? The statistics prove it's probable (even likely) that it might happen, but this isn't our life to be living. 

Now, let's take this one step further. 

What if the "happily ever after" for the Rice family includes Ray Rice playing football again? 

I ask, again, what pound of flesh is enough for an NFL athlete? I'm not asking you to forgive Ray Rice (as if it were even your place), nor am I asking you to absolve or excuse his actions. In fact, I'm pretty sure I just spent a whole lot of digital ink saying the exact opposite. 

We live in a world where New York Jets quarterback Michael Vick gets to play football after spending time in federal prison for running a dog-fighting ring where the animals were cruelly treated and viciously killed.

Former St. Louis Rams lineman Leonard Little got to play football again after his drunk driving killed a woman. He drove drunk, again, and was still allowed to play football for another five years. 

Rice's former teammate, linebacker Terrell Suggs, is still playing for the Ravens after allegedly punching his longtime girlfriend in the neck, pouring bleach on her and their son, and then kicking her in the face, breaking her nose. 

Rice's punishment cannot be that he never, ever deserves a second chance—even in the NFL. 

Now, will he play again? Probably not. 

There's going to be a huge coverage blitz around Rice if he ever returns to the NFL, and that might not be worth it for any team as Rice is already nearing the 30-year-old wall for running backs and is coming off a horrendous season. 

Yet we can't be so outraged that we actually support the idea that Rice—a 27-year-old man—never be happy or gainfully employed again. Where's the lesson there? Where is the "restorative justice" that Zirin talked about above?

There is none. At the point where there can absolutely be no forgiveness, we've reached the level of pettiness and overly punitive hatred. 

So many people have messed up in this ordeal. Rice—first and foremost—made the terrible and inexcusable decision that got this thing rolling. He deserves what he's gotten. I'll be the first to say that. Subsequently, Goodell, the NFL, the Ravens and plenty in the media have messed up in response to Rice's act. 

As we examine this whole issue one last time, let's hope together that those mistakes are the last and do everything we can do to ensure that is the case. 

I'll do my part. 

Will you?

Michael Schottey is an NFL National Lead Writer for Bleacher Report and a member of the Pro Football Writers of America. Find more of his stuff on his archive page and follow him on Twitter.