A lot of voices were speaking up on Tuesday. Joe Rutland points out that they still remain silent on one major topic.
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As the fallout continued Tuesday after the National Football League and Baltimore Ravens sent running back Ray Rice out of the league on Monday, voices—including Rice and his wife Janay, who was physically assaulted in the now-infamous TMZ Sports-released video—were being heard.
A LOT of voices. Not one of them, though, talked directly about domestic violence or domestic abuse.
First off, the Rices spoke with ESPN’s Josina Anderson by phone. Ray Rice told Anderson, “I have to be strong for my wife. She is so strong. … We are in good spirits. We have a lot of people praying for us and we’ll continue to support each other.” According to Anderson’s report, Ray Rice then put Janay on the phone. Janay Rice said, “I love my husband. I support him. I want people to respect our privacy in this family matter.”
Her comments there coincided with a statement she put out on her Instagram account which said, in part, “No one knows the pain that the media & unwanted options from the public has caused my family. To make us relive a moment in our lives that we regret everyday is a horrible thing.”
Maybe Ray Rice could have offered an “I’m sorry for the way that I treated my wife. I was wrong. Domestic violence is wrong, and I take full responsibility and am accountable for my actions” type of statement.
He didn’t.
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Meanwhile, the NFL publicly stood by an earlier statement from Monday that said Commissioner Roger Goodell—who should be polishing up his resume—and members of the league’s legal and official hierarchy had no knowledge nor had seen the full-length video.
The NFL’s statement on Tuesday read: “Security for Atlantic City casinos is handled by the New Jersey State Police. Any videos related to an ongoing criminal investigation are held in the custody of the state police. As we said yesterday: We requested from law enforcement any and all information about the incident, including the video from inside the elevator. That video was not made available to us.”
Tuesday afternoon, Goodell appeared in a CBS News Special Report to talk about what happened after the NFL saw the second video. He said:
We had not seen any video tape of what occurred in the elevator. We assumed that there was a video, we asked for the video, we asked for anything that was pertinent, but we were never granted that opportunity.
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Adding more fuel to this story is a report from The Associated Press that states the news organization, through a law enforcement source, viewed a longer video of the elevator assault. According to the AP, it shows the Rices swearing at one another, with the then-Janay Palmer spitting in Ray Rice’s face before he hit her.
What about the Ravens’ organization itself? On Monday, Head Coach John Harbaugh said, “I have nothing but hope and good will for Ray and Janay and we’ll do whatever we can going forward to help them as they go forward to try to make the best of it.” On Tuesday, the Ravens said that fans can get an exchange at any official team store for Rice’s jersey.
Sports Illustrated revealed its upcoming cover with an enlarged, grainy image of Rice following Palmer into the Atlantic City, N.J., hotel elevator below the headline “The Ray Rice Video And What It Exposes About The NFL” by Phil Taylor.
While all the reports and voices are flying across TV screens, Internet websites and Twitter feeds, I get the sense that domestic violence, while being understood is at the root of this situation, is not being addressed by Rice, the NFL or the Ravens.
Yes, I know Commissioner Goodell updated his league’s domestic violence policy in the wake of his earlier two-game suspension of Rice. That happened only after an outcry from the public, media and, possibly, current and former senior officials connected to the league.
Yet not one of the major players in this saga has explicitly used the term “domestic violence” or “domestic abuse” in any statement since Monday. Why? Are you going to tell me and the entire world that has now seen (if they have) this video that what happened was not domestic abuse? Please.
This week’s “Thursday Night Football” game on CBS pits the Pittsburgh Steelers against the Ravens in Baltimore. In sports parlance, coming off a Sunday game into a Thursday game is called a “short week.”
That’s usually the case.
Somehow, I don’t feel like there will be any “short weeks” or “long weeks” this season specifically for the Ravens or the NFL itself.
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Photo: Patrick Semansky/AP