I am using this letter to call for your resignation as Commissioner of the National Football League (NFL). I know you recently said you are focused on doing your job, but how is that possible when you and all of America know that you are incapable of doing so?
The obvious reason for bringing this up is your gross mishandling of the NFL’s domestic abuse crisis that has flooded the media in the past weeks. My problem is that in your reaction to the “Ray Rice matter,” as you so simplistically call it, you have shown the American people, the people who have made your sport a ten billion-dollar industry, that your only focus is keeping your name clean.
At your press conference on Sept. 19, nearly two weeks after you suspended Ray Rice from the NFL indefinitely, you told the nation, “We can use the NFL to help create change…in society with respect to domestic abuse.” But if you are so committed to fighting domestic violence, why has it taken you this long, in your eighth year in office, to finally do something about it? Since your first year as commissioner in 2007, there have been 83 arrests of NFL players relating to assault or domestic violence. So far this year there have been nine. In 2008 there were 15 cases. Where were you, Mr. Goodell, in 2008? Where was your grand announcement calling for change in the league and your office’s initiative to curb abuse? There was no announcement because there were no videos for the public to see, and there were few people calling for change.
Therein lies the problem of your tenure as commissioner. You have led a dysfunctional and disorganized league office that runs and makes decisions solely on public opinion. You believed that prior to Ray Rice’s situation, these domestic abuse issues would play themselves out, that maybe you could hand out a suspension or two and sweep the matter under the rug. That is also what you were trying to do with the Ray Rice matter until, unfortunately for you, the public saw what happened.
You suspended Ray Rice on July 24 for two NFL games after TMZ released a video in February showing the running back dragging his unconscious fiancé out of an elevator at an Atlantic City casino. In fact, according to a USA Today report, you have suspended five players for domestic violence, each for one game. Rice’s initial suspension was therefore the largest suspension you have handed out for domestic violence, and I applaud you for taking that extra step.
And you threw the hammer down on September 8 when TMZ released a new, horrifically graphic video of Rice spitting at and striking his fiancé in the elevator. You suspended him indefinitely after the Ravens cut him from the team. But what was it that forced you to change your decision? Were you so utterly disgusted by this new video and so surprised by what you saw that you didn’t want to look at Ray Rice in an NFL uniform again? Or were you scared that now that the public has access to what you had known for months, people may question the integrity of your league? The situation reeks of damage control.
I am not going to conjecture about whether you saw the video of Rice striking his fiancé before your initial suspension because that is not the point of this letter. But I do wonder if the second video gave you any new information about the matter. In other words, did you extend Rice’s suspension because you saw this video, or because the public saw this video? After speaking with Rice and overseeing an “investigation” into the matter, it is hard to believe that you learned anything new from that video that made you change your mind.
That is why this is all damage control. You want to convince the public that you care about the campaign against domestic abuse, something you have ignored for eight years, and so you make an example out of Ray Rice. The problem is that there were 82 other examples that you could have used to promote your so-called initiative. If you really cared about this, your league could have led the way in the campaign. In 2008, when 15 of your players were arrested for assault, you could have announced a new personal conduct policy. You could have used your position as the head of the most popular sport in the nation to promote domestic and dating violence awareness in America and to put an end to abuse. If you really cared, Mr. Goodell, you could have shown us that the NFL does not take domestic violence lightly, and you could have punished those 82 players for their horrific crimes.
But instead, you let them walk free. You let them walk free in the hope that the nation would turn a blind eye to the abuse that has tainted your league and would focus its attention on the game itself. But now you have been caught, and in your panic you have revealed where your priorities lie not in helping abuse victims but in enhancing the face of your league.
You have let us down. You have let down children mimicking your biggest stars on America’s playgrounds. You have let down victims of domestic violence. You cannot lead the country’s biggest sport while nobody in the country trusts you. You must step down. •
