The proverbial “gauntlet” has now been thrown down, and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is in some hot water.
As TheCelebrityCafe.com speculated yesterday could be the case, a new report claims that the NFL was indeed aware of the new Ray Rice video showing him physically assaulting his then fiancé, now wife Janay Palmer in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
The Associated Press is now reporting that a law enforcement official did send the incriminating video to a league official all the way back on April 9. The AP also claims to have an audio snippet of a woman speaking from an NFL phone number saying “you’re right, this is awful.”
TMZ reported that they had proof that the NFL never asked the Revel Casino for this specific video, which captured Rice and Palmer inside of the elevator.
Prior to the AP report, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell still insisted that the league had not seen the video before Monday morning, as he first told Norah O’Donnell on CBS This Morning:
"I got into the office and our staff had come to me and said there's new evidence, there's video that you need to see. And I watched it then," Goodell said in the interview. Then O’Donnell asked Goodell if he knew this video existed.
"Well, we had not seen any videotape of what occurred in the elevator," Goodell said. "We assumed that there was a video. We asked for video but we were never granted that opportunity."
Now, after the AP report, the league responded rather cautiously with the phrase “we’ll look into it.” This does not sound like an organization taking these accusations as flagrantly false, like the NFL does so many times when feeling attacked.
If what the AP is reporting is true, it then makes it painfully obvious that the league was trying to hide behind the legal system by how soft New Jersey State Officials acted in this situation.
The public, which is smarter than the NFL gives credit to, is calling for major action now by the league. Most of the 32 NFL owners love Goodell because of the money machine they have become in recent years, so they will back him to the end.
This is from New York Giants owner John Mara in a statement released to the team:
“Many of us were dissatisfied with the original two-game suspension of Ray Rice. The Commissioner took responsibility for that in his August 28th memo to the owners when he stated, ‘I didn’t get it right. Simply put, we have to do better. And we will.’ He then took appropriate steps to address this matter. Our policy now on domestic violence has been strengthened. We have all learned a valuable lesson from this episode. We now have a strong partnership with anti-domestic violence groups, and we will be a better League for it going forward.
My understanding is that the League and the Ravens made repeated requests to obtain the video of the Ray Rice incident and were denied each time. The notion that the League should have gone around law enforcement to obtain the video is, in my opinion, misguided, as is the notion that the Commissioner‘s job is now in jeopardy. The video is appalling, and I believe that the team and the League took appropriate action after they finally had the opportunity to view it.
There is no place for domestic violence in our sport or in our society, and we are committed to doing our part to prevent such heinous acts going forward," he said, according to NJ.com
These words by Mara came before the AP report came out. Now, the NFL finds themselves in uncharted territory: where they have little defense as they are usually on the offensive.
Which is worse? The scenario where the league office is such a mess that incompetence played out where the right people did not see the video? Or where Goodell did see the video, dished the light suspension to Rice and is now covering it all up? Either way, heads are going to roll and people will be held responsible.
Stay tuned for the conclusion to this drama fictionally titled "why the cover-up always turns out to be worse than the initial action."