Getting worse and worse for the NFL in the Ray Rice case:
The seven-month scandal that is threatening Roger Goodell’s future as NFL commissioner began with an unexpected phone call in the early morning hours on a Saturday in February.
Just hours after running back Ray Rice knocked out his then-fiancée with a left hook at the Revel Hotel Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the Baltimore Ravens’ director of security, Darren Sanders, reached an Atlantic City police officer by phone. While watching surveillance video — shot from inside the elevator where Rice’s punch knocked his fiancée unconscious — the officer, who told Sanders he just happened to be a Ravens fan, described in detail to Sanders what he was seeing.
Sanders quickly relayed the damning video’s play-by-play to team executives in Baltimore, unknowingly starting a seven-month odyssey that has mushroomed into the biggest crisis confronting a commissioner in the NFL’s 95-year history.
“Outside the Lines” interviewed more than 20 sources over the past 11 days — team officials, current and former league officials, NFL Players Association representatives and associates, advisers and friends of Rice — and found a pattern of misinformation and misdirection employed by the Ravens and the NFL since that February night.
After the Feb. 15 incident in the casino elevator, Ravens executives — in particular owner Steve Bisciotti, president Dick Cass and general manager Ozzie Newsome — began extensive public and private campaigns pushing for leniency for Rice on several fronts: from the judicial system in Atlantic County, where Rice faced assault charges, to commissioner Goodell, who ultimately would decide the number of games Rice would be suspended from this fall, to within their own building, where some were arguing immediately after the incident that Rice should be released.
The Ravens also consulted frequently with Rice’s Philadelphia defense attorney, Michael J. Diamondstein, who in early April had obtained a copy of the inside-elevator video and told Cass: “It’s f—ing horrible.” Cass did not request a copy of the video from Diamondstein but instead began urging Rice’s legal team to get Rice accepted into a pretrial intervention program after being told some of the program’s benefits. Among them: It would keep the inside-elevator video from becoming public.
Read the whole thing, which includes the fact that the Ravens owner appears to have attempted to bribe Rice into just taking a public beating, so to say, and later on Bisciotti would give him a job.
Poopyman
Bigfoot lives!
Howard Beale IV
The more this keeps happening the more and more the NFL is starting to look like herpes: you really didn’t want it, you got screwed when you got it, and if you could get rid of if you would…but you can’t.
Some subpoenas need to start being filed fast ‘n furious like. Maybe AT&T best be seriously re-thinking about their DirecTV merger with this shit going down-ya don’t want to be stuck with a corpse now…..
Suzanne
@Howard Beale IV: Until this changes, I remain skeptical that any meaningful change will result from this. A different commissioner isn’t a meaningful change if they tolerate this shit, too.
jl
I am so shocked. Maybe the whole thing will implode, antitrust exemption stripped (ha ha, the GOP would not allow it, since their business model is so similar, though their product is much shoddier).
But what the hell, Maybe football fans will have to settle for Canadian and rugby. Might be an improvement.
Roger Moore
@Howard Beale IV:
Don’t tell that to those of us living in LA. We somehow managed to get rid of the NFL, and we can’t get it back.
Baud
@jl:
IIRC, only baseball has an antitrust exception. NFL does not.
scav
It’s also probably going to be very interesting watching the blame being pushed up and down and around, it was the Ravens! no, it was Mr X of this specific position of this specific hierarchy, it wasn’t the NFL as a whole, or this specific high level individual . . . . Which and how big a bodypart are they willing to lose to save the whole, and we seem to have several non-volunteers.
Enjoyed the explicit bit about the going after the prosecutors and legal system re sentencing/whatever as there have been so many defenders of the NFL citing simple reports on how much lower the arrest stats are for players, and refusing to dig into what other factors might be going on. I can theoretically believe they might not be inherently more domestic-violence prone than the average citizen (the strong and clumsy ones that can’t catch being lumped in with the general) but I’ll be damned if I don’t think personal wealth, the backing of a massive corporate PR shield and a Diamondstein-sized dose of lawyers doesn’t likely muddy the legal side.
jl
@Baud: Really? Then how come congress critters are talking about taking away some kind of ‘antitrust’ something or other? Including Pelosi. Do they not know the law, or was it misreported. I heard it on an actually respectable actual news outlet. What are they talking about then?
Dog On Porch
Why did NFL owners need to hire a former FBI director to “investigate” whether anyone at NFL headquarters had signed for delivery of the Ray Rice tape, and/or if if anyone at NFL headquarters had viewed it by the day in question?
How many people work at NFL headquarters? Too many to ask a direct question to, in expectation of a prompt, unequivocal response?
Was it stupidity or hubris that killed the golden goose in the old story?
Baud
@jl:
Ok, looked it up, and like everything else, it’s complicated.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Baud: All of the major sports leagues have an antitrust exemption that covers some aspects of their operations. Without one they wouldn’t be able to negotiate TV contracts as a league. Baseball’s exemption is much broader than any of the others and covers things that none of the rest do, such as allowing MLB to operate the minor leagues as nothing more than a captive feeder system for the majors. (Prior to the exemption in the early 1920s, the various baseball leagues looked much more like European soccer, with teams lower down the food chain supporting themselves in part by selling players to those higher up but they also had the right to keep a player.)
HR Progressive
The “Hey Ray, come tell our rookies how to get used to the league” part is what dropped my jaw.
They KNEW he’d KO’d his partner, and still thought he would be a good role model for new players?
Unfuckingbelievable.
scav
@jl: Might also be the non-profit tax status of the NFL, that often gets mentioned.
Howard Beale IV
@Roger Moore:
Beats me.
Pooh
The thing that really chaps my ass about the whole thing is that this emptiest of empty suits made $44 million last year. Meritocracy my ass.
jl
@Baud: @scav:
thanks. Will be fun to watch, if things get that bad for the league. And with almost as much action per minute of official game time as real American football!
Pooh
ALSO, the fact that when he’s finally euthanized people are going to talk like the problem is solved, not that the NFL (read: the owners) just hired another well-compensated human flak jacket to take the heat as they profit like bandits. Or captains of industry. But then I repeat myself.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
It’s pretty easy — when the NFL says that you have to spend public money to build the team a new stadium or they’ll move, you say, Don’t let the door hit you on your way out. And if they say they want to bring a team back, you say, Great, how are you guys planning to pay for that? Because we’re not giving you even one taxpayer dollar.
Problem solved.
trollhattan
Goodell’s toast, Rice is toast (mmm, toasted Rice) and one or two of the currently involved players will be tossed into the sacrificial volcano, then we’ll move on to Next Shiny Thing.
Will the NFL/pro sports change for the better? Doubt it. What might still happen is a flood of similar stories that force more aggressive changes.
jl
@trollhattan: I think the key will be how seriously the corporate sponsors are really taking this. Do they really give a damn about the ethics somebody getting beaten unconscious? Doubt it (actually they would be violating their fiducial duties if they did care about that in and of itself), they are amoral money machines just like the NFL. But if the sponsors detect substantial public concern that may disturb $$$$ flow, they will act like they care a very great deal about the example that is being set for our precious youth.
And also, they will be concerned about such a huge corporate entity displaying such abject and patent, truly sad, incompetence at being an amoral money machine that is supposed to be able to maintain appearances.
NobodySpecial
@HR Progressive: Dude, it’s the Ravens. Rice might be the best example they got. Who else would they use, Ray Lewis?
Howard Beale IV
@Mnemosyne: Especially since every single team (save one) is privately owned. So why should the public pay for the largesse of private owners and stadium suppliers whose CEO’s kick puppies?
Phoenix_Rising
When the stakes were high, Ozzie Newsome fumbled, then coughed up the ball.
Consistency: It’s only a virtue if you’re not a screwup.
Dog On Porch
@Pooh: I watched 49er games in Kezar Stadium as a kid. It was a bench stadium, built for high school events, and was located in in San Francisco’s Golden Gate park. Look at film of that era (the ’60’s) and you’ll see Kezar was typical. Nowadays billion dollar stadiums are the order of the day. NFL owners by and large attribute that growth to their own wiles, and that’s why the pooch is currently in the process of getting screwed. It’s been like watching Old Yeller for the first time all over again, but this time knowing what’s coming.
No shit– while editing this comment, I notice your nom de plume is pooch. Honest to god, I just noticed, just now- nothing personal.
jl
@Howard Beale IV: I can think of interesting partial reforms. For example, in order to retain whatever anti-trust exemptions or gimmes the NFL does have, any team that accepts public money for stadiums and other toys, and takes public money so the team can chisel on providing game security and traffic and parking services, there has to be at least partial public ownership.
The fact that the Green Bay public ownership model was eliminated by the NFL really grates me, and has put a pretty big dent in my half-hearted fanship of pro football. (Some BJ lawyer type will probably come along and lawyersplain to me that what I just typed is not really true…)
jl
@Dog On Porch: Kezar is a still a very cool place. I went a local Scottish games thing there years ago. I have actually watched a guy toss his caber there! It was a big one.
jl
@Dog On Porch: pooh
Eric U.
@Suzanne: So you would think that Penn State fans would be happy that bowl eligibility and scholarships were restored early. But no, Penn State fans are outraged that the NCAA didn’t restore the wins and Penn State return the statue of PedoJoe to its place by the stadium. I considered posting something about how disgusting the fans behavior is to “onward state,” just to prove how disgusting they are, but I don’t need to fall on that particular sword. They managed to clear the alumni-elected portion of the board of directors of anyone that was a realist about the whole sandusky situation. It’s not pretty. “Idiocraty” wasn’t supposed to be a blueprint
Dog On Porch
@jl: Old Kezar had been torn down for a year or so before I saw the field you know. It was a visual shock to see it for the first time, too, the mind’s eye being what it is. Where there once stood an oval wall, there is now sky.
Alex
This story is interesting because it’s sourced to a few groups of people — one that wants to emphasize that Ray Rice was truthful with the NFL and the other that wants to blame the Ravens instead of the NFL commissioner’s office.
Which means the next step is the Raven’s office going after the NFL commissioner. Which… looks like that’s scheduled for Monday.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@jl: The “public” ownership of the Packers is something of a sham. They sell shares but there is no secondary market (so a shareholder can’t sell them to anyone except back to the team), the shares never change value, and they don’t pay any dividends, and shareholders. Shareholders do vote in elections for the board of directors but ownership is kept so dilute that’s it’s functionally impossible for anyone but the candidates nominated by management to get elected. So it really isn’t public ownership in any meaningful sense.
Dog On Porch
@jl: Oh. Then I say it’s pretty obvious I need a new prescription for my glasses. No kidding, I’m overdue for an upgrade.
Bob In Portland
I don’t know if anyone saw the recent study (it circulated in science blogs a few days ago) about Chimpanzees and violence. There was a theory that violence in chimps has something to do with interaction with humans, but no, they are vicious, murdering, face-chewing creatures. They are also the most closely related species to humans.
There was another story earlier in the summer that hominid faces evolved as human hands evolved. That is, human faces evolved to take a punch. That is, as humans evolved to make a fist, facial bone structures evolved to take a punch.
There was a third story in the last few weeks. In the past fifty thousand years male human faces evolved, became more feminine. Scientists said that a rise in the level of estrogens generally occurred in males over this period, and that it coincides with the rise of civilization.
There was an article, I think I saw it in Discover Magazine on a cross-country plane flight a few years back, that pointed to a study of the high frequency of capital punishment in hunter-gatherer societies in New Guinea. The authors of the study suggested that societies cannot thrive with frequent random acts of violence and killing the violent outliers was a way of self-domesticating the human race. Society is the control of violence. We don’t like purse snatchers or bullies or robbers, but if it’s organized violence by the government (like war) most of us go along.
Football is an incredibly violent sport. It wasn’t surprising that Peterson talked about how he was disciplined as a child. From my limited experience in organized sports you do not get ahead in football by trying to debate the guy across from you in the trenches, and people who excelled, especially in line play, tended to be more violent.
I love sitting on the couch and watching football. It’s controlled violence, like a Godzilla movie. A burst of violence and then forty seconds to sip a beer. We’re aware that people playing football suffer from brain damage over a career of collisions. We also know that people with frontal lobe damage have less control over violent actions. There was a book a few years ago by a doctor in the Washington area who examined killers on death row and found most of them had frontal lobe deficits, either from birth defects, being physically abused or whatnot.
What I am saying is that football is organized violence. I don’t get into bar fights, I watch football. Other people are violent for me. It seems that football encourages interpersonal violence and it should not be surprising that it spills into private lives. It causes damage to frontal lobes.
There’s a hypocrisy in enjoying football. There’s a hypocrisy in all the hand-wringing about standards for football players. Certainly, a crime is a crime, but why the surprise? Also, the commissioner is a dick and I’d prefer not seeing him on the news.
jl
@Dog On Porch: I’m too young (sadly, only relatively speaking) to remember anything of old Kezar. But I think how they redid it for public and local school us is very nice.
Whenever I think of Kezar I think of an interview with John Brodie who was trying to act all “i am smarter than you’ intellectual sportsman. Poor schmuck interview unwittingly stepped in it when asked Brodie what Kezar ‘meant’. Brodie had no clue and was in a sputtering rage: ‘Kezar! Kezar! It just means Kezar! Kezar, that’s all!’ (close paraphrase).
But, as any SF Bay Area school child knows, Kezar is the name of the old SF grande dame who donated (or left money in her will, I forget which) that was used to build the stadium. Or, most of the money. I think that was back in the day when the politicians who ran SF were crooks of the highest of most flamboyant order. Back when they were such penny ante public pick pockets they were reputed to paint their houses on the public dime by licking the paint off of city hall and pissing against the walls when they got home.
That was back when San Francisco was a Real City, not the damn mess it is now!
Howard Beale IV
@jl:it amazes me that Zygi was found guilty of racketerring in a lawasuit that went on for 21 fucking years.
raven
@jl:
raven
@Howard Beale IV: Bleak House!!!
jl
There is a park, I forget which one, which was appropriated by some old SF city hall crook to be his home garden. He snuck into the city title records one night before the deed was to be recorded and carved out a square in the middle for his house. He couldn’t keep the public out, but he had the foresight to include a space for big private garden around his house, and whenever he felt cramped by that, he could walk into his public garden right outside in any direction.
I’m not sure which park that is, but there is one near downtown where you see this unexplained expanse of concrete that has the general shape of a house on top of the hill in the middle of the park. Looks like somebody poured a bunch of cement over a house foundation.
Villago Delenda Est
Goodell is looking more and more like a pathetic weasel assclown here. Furthermore, the NFL overall has a serious fucking problem on their hands.
Shakezula
Oh this is going to be fun. The Goodell supporters will have to tap dance really fast to explain this one.
jl
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): You’re a lawyer out to ruin my private fantasies, aren’t you. OK then, I say throw reform of Pakers ‘public’ ownership into the package.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bob In Portland: Up next from Gospodin Romanov: Putin = Mumia sweatshirts.
raven
Bob Dylan and Neil Young at the S.N.A.C.K. (Students Need Athletics, Culture and Kicks) Benefit Concert at Kezar Stadium, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA, March 23, 1975.
jl
@raven: As I think I mentioned before, a little too young even for that. I remember just barely learning to read, in some early grade, and standing in line with parents at grocery store.
Some tabloid had the headline “Hippies! Drugs, free sex, no baths!” I didn’t know what ‘hippies meant’ and asked my parents who started to explain, but changed the topic as they saw the headline. I had no clue what the drugs and free sex were about, but I understood ‘no baths’ and wanted to be hippie.
Gawd damn, that is a true story, the Lord help my soul.
Edit: but by fifth grade and all through HS, my generation caught all sorts of bile and bitterness from sad aholes who felt they had missed out on the fun and took the hippie generation out on us. And then I hated me them damn hippies and their yippies and whatever the hell they were calling themselves.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@jl: No. I’m an accountant out to ruin your private fantasies.
jl
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): That’s OK then. I thank you. Throw in the Packers, they gotta reform too. Pelosi and her ilk can do what they damn well please with them.
scav
@Villago Delenda Est: Hey, it’s just corporate culture. Goodell’s mentors and teachers were lying pathetic weasel assclowns — he’s just doing the best job he knows how using techniques passed down to him by immemorial practice, learned at the knees of those he looked up to.
jayboat
I find Deadspin a lot more fun to read than ESPN on matters like this. They don’t partake of the sugarcoated corporate-speak that is ESPN’s standard fare.
Drew Magary wrote a great piece about Goodell and the job of commisionering a couple days ago. This thread is a good place for it.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@jl: Eh, the Packers are a non-profit corporation. While the majority of stock is owned by the people who bought it is in the the 1950 stock sale; they aren’t owned by a plutocrat or a consortium of mini-plutocrats. Also, they are the only team to release their financials every year.
Dog On Porch
@Villago Delenda Est: Goodell is the perfect front man for NFL owners. If they had built him in a laboratory, he couldn’t be a more perfect conduit to effect their collective will. So why replace him? And if he is replaced, who with? Condeleeza Rice?
jl
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): You a lawyer aint you? You trying to trick me? I thought I got this all straight in my head, and you come along.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@jayboat:
The article discussed here is from Outside the Lines, which is the part of the ESPN empire that practices real journalism. They don’t partake of the sugarcoated corporate-speak that is ESPN’s standard fare, either. The writing is of a very different style than Deadspin, but they do a good job. Bob Ley runs a good operation.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@jl: I am a lawyer, but (full disclosure) I am also a Packer fan.
ETA: They probably require some reform, but much less than many other teams. That’s as fair as I can be.
jl
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Since Kezar Stadium came up, all I can do at this point is quote from an example of fine presidentin’ of the era.
“I don’t know what to think. One man comes in and says one thing, and then another man comes in and says just the opposite. God, I hate this job! “
samiam
Macro economic expert, Military strategist expert, and now NFL commissioner expert wr0ng on everything Cole should stick with feeding his pets and putting up random people from his past that just show up and then never leave.
Anne Laurie
Cole, ICYMI, Spencer Hall:
jayboat
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
Ok, I agree about Ley and what he does with Outside the Lines. I shouldn’t have painted him with my broad brush as I was referring to the larger fustercluck and sports reporting in general- not just this one article.
Goodell is a big part of this story and Magary’s piece makes some excellent points. Worth a read.
Dog On Porch
@jl: I remember John Brodie as being a good natured guy (and Stanford graduate), who admitted the game never really clicked for him until he was 30. Certainly during the last few seasons of his career he was a primo QB. In fact, he was an NFL MVP one of those years. He did suffer a stroke some years ago, which naturally did slow him down.
jl
@Dog On Porch: Thanks people. You all make me feel young again tonight! Ah, youth!
That Brodie interview was from at least several years ago, and it may have been something old when I heard it, since something about the history of Kezar stadium and some proposal was controversial (heck, maybe they wanted different color flowers in the flower beds, and there was a gigantic outcry, this is San Francisco, after all). It was the only time I remember hearing Brodie speak, but remember he was a good QB when I was tyke. Maybe he was a good guy, but in that one interview he came off really badly. So, not sure what was up. Didn’t sound at all like he had a stroke history, or was particularly old.
Dog On Porch
@jl: Corporations that deal with the NFL care about the public’s perception of the league, you can bet on that. Undermine that perception to any serious degree, and (to paraphrase the old saying), “Corporations desert a sinking ship”.
jl
@Dog On Porch: “Corporations desert a sinking ship”. Is that the original version? I’ll remember that.
Hal
Wait, is this even legal? What business does an officer have in relaying information in what could be a potential, and ultimately was, a criminal case to someone not directly involved? I’m surprised the office was reprimanded in some way.
Wally Ballou
Tigers start the weekend with a 10-1 drubbing of the Royals in KC. Life is sweet.
jibeaux
I’m a lawyer, but I ain’t got nothing to say on team ownership stuff. Although I do find any legal topic you care to name more interesting than football. Autumn would be perfect if it didn’t include the omnipresence of fucking football.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@jibeaux:
Even even negotiable instruments? God, I hated that and the other UCC classes.
jibeaux
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): I’m not saying I’ve had a lot of conversations about that, but if I had to pick between talking negotiable instruments and watching a football game all the way through, we’re gonna talk negotiable instruments. I just can’t bear football.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@jibeaux: Wow. How do you feel about rugby?
Jebediah, RBG
@jayboat:
Same guy wrote a piece about hitting kids that I thought was interesting – he talks about losing his shit with his five-year-old daughter, attempting to spank her, and how devastated he was by it.
Jebediah, RBG
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
Like a trombone or a fretless bass, on which you may play any pitch you like?
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Jebediah, RBG: Unfortunately no. Neither jazz, ska, not funk come out of legal negotiable instruments. Although people got payed with them. Basically, they are checks and things like that.
Jebediah, RBG
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
So, not quite as much fun, but necessary.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Jebediah, RBG: And oh so dull.
justonce
@Roger Moore:
taxpayer money to build new stadiums with luxury suites.
IIRC the NFL revenue sharing excludes the local gate/tickets which is why the owners want to squeeze as much as possible out of the stadiums with seat licenses and all.
it’s the reason a perfectly functional stadium needs to be replaced.
Jebediah, RBG
@Jebediah, RBG:
and an interesting followup to that in the form of an email from a reader:
I Turned Out OK In Spite Of Corporal Punishment, Not Because Of It
Jebediah, RBG
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
Freshman or sophomore year I took a course in Public Finance, so I feel I have some experience with dull. The class met once a week at 7 pm for almost three hours. I ingested near-fatal amounts of caffeine before each class and still had serious trouble keeping my eyes open. Once in a while, during the mid-class fifteen-minute break, I would hear of a party and forget to go back to the class.
jl
@Jebediah, RBG: Public Finance, dull? WTF?
Jebediah, RBG
@jl:
I know, hard to believe! And of course I remember none of it.