Welcome back to campus. I hope everyone enjoyed their summers, and to all the freshmen here at Bradley University, I hope you survived your first full week of classes.
Speaking of summers, what a summer in sports.
All the news of LeBron James returning to Cleveland, Johnny Football’s greatly exaggerated NFL career, Michael Sam’s showering tendencies and more than 100 games of baseball ran rampant across various sports networks.
One news story I separate from the rest is the situation behind that of Ravens running back Ray Rice.
The debacle that was the pro bowl running back assaulting his then fiance, who he has since married, on camera and dragging her out of an elevator, only to get a slap on the wrist gets looped into a bigger, much larger issue: how much of a joke the NFL administration is.
Now, don’t take that the wrong way. I love the NFL. My uncle has held opening day parties for as long as I’ve been alive. My Bears are going to win the Super Bowl this year, Jay Cutler will win the MVP award and everything will be awesome.
But this? This is an issue that makes my skin crawl so much that it makes me question every- thing I’ve come to adore about this league.
It’s no question that domestic violence is a problem in our country. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, one in every four women experiences domestic violence in her lifetime, 1.3 million women each year are victims and most cases of domestic violence go unreported.
But when a bigger name player gets arrested for clearly commit- ting an act of domestic violence, the NFL treats this like one of the most inferior violations possible.
On July 24, Roger Goodell suspended Rice for two NFL games for his crime, which was cited as “conduct detrimental to the NFL.”
Why such a small punishment for a hefty crime? Is it part of the star treatment, which seems to run rampant in all major sports? Maybe it’s part of the NFL’s crusade against substance and performance enhancing drug abuse, which has already found 10 players suspended for performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) and eight suspended for substance use.
You would like to think it has to do with more of the latter, but the reason was that the NFL underestimated the significance of Rice’s crime.
While Goodell is too busy bringing the hammer down on 18 players for drug and PED accusations, including Josh Gordon’s season-long suspension for drug use, he neglected to realize just how much worse Ray Rice’s situation is.
Domestic violence is an issue that’s among the worst in the nation. And to the NFL, it’s a joke that has the wrong punch line.
