NFL vs. NOW
The NFL is in a panic over angry women and angry sportswriters, sometimes one and the same. Commissioner Roger Goodell held a press conference yesterday to announce a crackdown on football players behaving badly. It played to very bad reviews. He apologized and promised a new and more sensitive NFL. But no number of pink ribbons will satisfy the National Organization for Women. President Terry O’Neill immediately renewed calls for Goodell’s head.
Never mind that the arrest rate for NFL players is lower than the rate for adult men in the general population. Here’s a chart from Deadspin.
NFL vs. NOW
So, why the uproar now? Ray Rice was seen last February dragging his unconscious fiancé Janay Palmer out of an Atlantic City casino elevator, caveman style. It was obvious something brutal had happened. Rice was charged with aggravated assault and placed in a one year pre-trial intervention program. The NFL suspended him for two games. With the unpleasantness behind them, Janay and Ray got married and lived happily ever after.
That is until an elevator video surfaced this month on TMZ showing Ray actually dropping Janay with a left hook. Then the NFL took action to punish the victim by taking away her husband’s of income. Rice was suspended indefinitely.
Video footage evidently concentrates the mind, whether it’s of a knockout punch or a beheading. That puts Commissioner Goodell and President Obama in the same boat. Well, not actually, NOW still likes Obama.
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