The NFL’s response to Ray Rice’s act of domestic violence has been their biggest embarrassment since former NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle decided to play games the day after President Kennedy’s assassination.
The NFL decided to suspend Ray Rice indefinitely after a video surfaced of Ray Rice striking his fiance, Janay Palmer, twice in an elevator. This came after another video surfaced of Ray Rice dragging his unconscious fiance out of the elevator, but it didn’t show what happened inside the elevator.
Originally, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell suspended Ray Rice for two regular season games after the first video surfaced.
The response to the two-game suspension was met with public outcry, as it should have been.
“Ray Rice will be scrutinized for his entire career and probably his post-football life,” Darryl Asuncion (Psychology, sophomore) said.
Goodell was made public enemy number one when he only suspended Rice for two games. In the past, Goodell has suspended players for four games just for failing their first substance abuse test. Before the second video came out, Rice admitted he committed domestic violence. If that were the case, how is two games justified?
Roger Goodell has repeatedly denied that he received the tape. If the video tape of Rice assaulting his fiance reached the hands of an NFL executive, or Goodell himself, then there is a possibility Goodell could lose his job.
According to an article on Canal Street Chronicles, Goodell claimed that, “Ignorance is not an excuse” when The New Orleans Saints went through the Bountygate scandal. The same has to apply to the commissioner.
It is the commissioner’s responsibility to have knowledge of something of this magnitude if it enters his realm of power. Ignorance is inexcusable; an intentional cover up will call for immediate termination. There is nothing that can be said nor excuse that can be made. Roger Goodell needs to be fired if he intentionally covered up the tape.
Roger Goodell wants to do whatever he can to come out of this with some sort of dignity. Players like Greg Hardy and Ray McDonald have been convicted of domestic violence but played opening weekend. If Goodell cared about the issue, he would have suspended these players, too. He will only respond when the public demands for it.
If the second video tape had never reached NFL’s hands or even if  Roger Goodell had no knowledge of that video arriving to the NFL, there is only one thing he can do: Look straight into a camera directed at a national audiences and say that he has made a mistake. Even after he says this, it will be hard to look at him the same way. He disrespected almost 50 percent of the NFL’s demographic, women, and simply showed that this issue doesn’t matter to him.
Hopefully after this incident, people will open their eyes to the reality of domestic violence. There are not a lot of things worse, and something needs to be done about it.