Apparently football fans and NFL owners are ecstatic that wife-beater Ray Rice has won his appeal of the indefinite NFL suspension and can now be hired as a free agent.
In a world that I want to live in, Mr. Rice would be a pariah that NO team would hire and that NO fans would pay to watch play.
I think that a man who beats a woman unconscious in an elevator should be IMMEDIATELY arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated. I think Mr. Rice should be described as a felon, and I think the world of professional sports should not knowingly put felons on the playing field in uniform.
This exemplifies why I no longer follow or watch the NFL.
Please share widely!
…who thinks Goodell reacted TOO quickly.
If you care about labor law and enforcing it, Goodell clearly overstepped his authority and contradicted his own actions. He creates a new standard after the fact and applied it to Rice retroactively. This violates the nature if his contract and the agreement the NFLPA had consented to. I certainly want the NFL to adopt a zero tolerance policy for domestic violence, criminal behavior, and performance enhancing drugs. They need to relax their policy on substances like pot that are actually legal to use in some states and definitely shouldn’t merit a stricter suspension than domestic violence.
Rice is an asshole and has got a long way to go to make amends, but it is patently unfair he is held to a double standard while worse offenders who are less prominent got off lighter because their videos (and let’s be honest-Goodell saw the tape!) didn’t get to TMZ. This isn’t a win for Rice as it is a defeat for Goodell.
I agree with the decision and your characterization of it.
My point is that we, and America, have colossally missed the point.
Mr. Rice is an abuser who should be a felon. Nobody has disputed the horrific beating that he perpetrated. That beating should have ended his NFL career BECAUSE HE IS A FELON.
It should have ended his NFL career because:
1. No team would hire him, and
2. Fans would object his being hired
3. Advertisers and sponsors would want NOTHING to do with him (OJ Smith comes to mind).
Mr. Rice should be a pariah because of the violent crime he committed. This labor dispute should be immaterial.
his football career may be over. Just because he’s eligible doesn’t mean anyone will pick him up. It’ll be very interesting to see how the teams play this one.
Perhaps I am overly cynical.
My prediction is that he will be playing for one team or another as soon as this year (for the playoffs), perhaps next year.
He also served actual jail time for his crimes and has given nearly all if his free time and a considerable sum to PETA. Whether genuine or for optics, it doesn’t seem that Rice has appeared sufficiently contrite to the same degree.
It may take awhile before Rice or Peterson gets there . ESPN ran an interview of Janay Rice that might as well have been written by his agent. But a big difference is that his production has been down, he isn’t the player he was five years ago. A team might risk the PR fallout for AP but it probably won’t for Rice-not this year anyway.
And while I definitely blame Rice for his actions, he is a symptom of a deeply diseased game and business operation. One that ignores PEDs, painkiller and opiate addictions, paid to cover up concussion research, and insists the game is being made safer while players are hitting harder and having to play more frequently for absurd Thursday night games and a dangerous 18 game season starting next year. Once the league cleans itself up it can have the credibility to crack down on players-until then I consider these suspensions a joke and welcome a third party cracking down on Goodell’s two faced reign.
I agree he should have spent some time in jail. But not being able to pursue his vocation once he is released? That makes no sense to me.
In my view, this crime (beating a woman unconscious) is more like child sex abuse than felonies like illegal gaming (cf Pete Rose).
There is at least some evidence that people who commit this kind of crime are not readily “rehabilitated”, and there is stronger evidence (in my view) that we do not currently have effective ways of differentiating those who have from those who have not been rehabilitated.
This, by the way, is an example of why I find the Massachusetts Probation Department scandal so egregious. This question — “Is Joe Blow, who was convicted of and incarcerated for beating the bejesus out of a woman, now a threat to society” — should ONLY be answered by qualified, well-trained, and well-balanced professionals.
I have little sympathy for a professional athlete like Mr. Rice who commits this kind of crime. I think he should spend more than “some” time in jail, and I think the loss of this particular vocation sets a good example for other athletes who are all too likely to do the same.
In my view, a priest who abuses children should lose his vocation. An accountant who embezzles funds from his clients should lose his vocation. Yes — in my view, a football player who beats a woman unconscious should lose his vocation.
The priest shouldn’t be allowed to be around children and the accountant can’t be trusted so ok. But will women will be at risk if the abusive football player returns to work? Probably less so than in almost any other job he could have. I don’t see how denying the guy the ability to make a living makes women any more safe, particularly his wife.
Women will be at risk so long as a unrehabilitated abuser is walking the street. The more celebrity, wealth, and power he has, the greater that risk.
It’s about more than just Mr. Rice, though. It’s about the example set for millions of young people. It’s about what other other colleagues of Mr. Rice do.
It’s about whether our culture values women enough to punish their abusers — even if their abusers are powerful, or popular, or talented.
I disagree that he should be punished differently than the electrician that commits the same crime. The problem with Rice is he was not appropriately punished. That is what sends the wrong signal to young people and his peers – that he is above the law.
But your question is a good one. Would an electrician be banned from his profession if he’d been convicted of domestic violence?
It is certainly true that Mr. Rice is not a felon. That is a major failure of our justice system that has already occurred.
No electrician that I know is televised weekly, is a role model (like it or not) for millions of children, and has his name, face, number, and everything else plastered over millions of dollars worth of merchandise.
Being a professional football player is different from being an electrician. With the great compensation and celebrity come great responsibilities. Those who, like Mr. Rice, commit crimes of violence — especially against women and children — should be treated as the pariahs they are.
Had he been aggressively pursued by the authorities, instead of the authorities giving him a wrist slap and working with the league to make the incident initially appear less severe, then the issue of a ban would have been moot – and you could have had a situation where the electrician and nfl player were treated the same.
But the NFL player was protected by the system in a way an electrician wouldn’t be, which is why a ban or much more severe suspension would have been appropriate, had the NFL been concerned about domestic abuse instead of just its PR.
This story in the New York Times from back in October details how “justice” works in Tallahassee for FSU football players. It is a long article, but shows how athletes are treated differently after committing crimes ranging from stealing a scooter to domestic violence.
Here is a key part of the problem:
I have maybe watched a total of 30 minutes of football (at any level) since reading that article.
but to me the blame is on the NFL for knowing all the relevant facts about the situation and not doing what they should have from the beginning.
That said, I’m not so sure Rice will ever play again whether or not he’s reinstated. A team still has to put him on their payroll — and I don’t see that happening here.