Ray Rice Punches Out

Ray Rice suspended indefinitely and cut from the Ravens. Fuck, things move fast in the world of NFL knee jerk responses to media pressure.

Anybody who imagines the NFL as an office full of jocks drinking brews and having yucks has no idea of the corporate nature of the multi-billion dollar business. It’s a serious enterprise filled with serious people and large legal teams enforcing many rules. When the NFL investigates misconduct, it’s not Jim Otto hobbling around in a Columbo coat asking a couple questions before a long afternoon nap. It’s a team of well-paid investigators and attorneys digging deep for any and all information, mostly to cover the asses of this lucrative big business.

The NFL claims before today they didn’t see the inside-the-elevator videotape of Ray Rice punching his fiancee into the land of romantic wedding dreams. Peter King of SI wrote that people in the NFL office did. It doesn’t matter. The NFL knew Ray Rice punched his girlfriend in the face and knocked her out and then dragged her halfway out of an elevator at an Atlantic City casino. The entire world saw that before Ray Rice was given a paltry two game suspension by Commissioner Roger Goodell and not sanctioned at all by his own team. Hours after the actual punching video is leaked by the vaunted TMZ Sports canard, Ray Rice is suspended indefinitely by the NFL and released by the Ravens. Even though not a single fact in the case changed.

In July, the NFL made the wrong decision for the right reason. Now they’re making the right decision for the wrong reason. I’m not sure what it is about professional sports league offices that cause them to take binders full of solid evidence and adjudicate matters with the twisted logic of a teen girl on her first menstrual cycle.

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