Keith Strudler: Ray Rice, Domestic Violence And The NFL

It’s a safe default to assume you’re always being watched. The notion of privacy is as antiquated as afternoon tea time and top hats. Particularly if you’re somebody, you live your life as if it’s on TV.

Ray Rice is very much now on TV, and not for playing football on Sunday, something he won’t do for the Baltimore Ravens or any NFL team for the foreseeable future. Rice has seen his two-game suspension for a domestic violence case involving his then fiancé and now wife in an Atlantic City hotel escalate to an indefinite one, and the Ravens have officially dropped him from their roster. That all transpired when TMZ obtained and released previously unseen video of Rice knocking out Janay Palmer in a hotel elevator, a video that’s more viral than a common cold and has managed to make the cover of this week’s Sports Illustrated. The graphic clip of Rice taking what appears to be a largely unprovoked shot at Palmer was far more gut wrenching than the previously available footage of Rice simply dragging a lifeless woman from the elevator. This new video dispelled any notion that Rice might have acted in self-defense, a fairly hollow claim from an NFL athlete. The video is, by all accounts, the true smoking gun, even if the authorities admitted weren’t looking for the weapon.

Of course, while it seems league commissioner Roger Goodell hadn’t searched for the elevator video, which we all knew existed, TMZ did. So the quasi-journalistic semi-news organization managed to get someone in the now closed Revel Casino to break protocol and turn over the tape. It’s a machiavellian process that might help clarify the evening, even if it puts yet another nail in the coffin once known as reporting integrity. For now, Goodell is saying he hadn’t yet seen the elevator video, explaining the previous judgement was based only on the aftermath, not the  act itself.

The outrage in the past few days has been considerable. It's come from both inside and outside the game, as fans, commentators, former players, and pretty much anyone with a pulse and a voice has become a defacto expert in domestic abuse and corporate HR. Hindsight might always be 20/20, although foresight was far less so in this case. For all the newfound outrage, what exactly did everyone think happened in that elevator? A conversation? There's a clear dissonance between last week and today that's seemingly willful, a desire to know no more than need be. It's as if football always came first, until it just couldn't.

And now that weight has fallen on commissioner Goodell, and the league itself, as so vastly out of touch with the greater world outside the field of play, minus the executive boardrooms that oversee this dominion. It's a fair critique, because ultimately Goodell is responsible for this empire, and he is compensated very well -- take that back -- excessively well, for the privilege. He should recognize that the league doesn't operate in a vacuum like other private enterprise, and with that advantage comes restriction. Like when a players beats his fiancée in a casino elevator, you suspend them long enough so that people know you're serious. I don't know how long that is, but it's more than a fortnight.

But, before everyone throws blame elsewhere, it's at least worth the exercise to see where we contribute to the problem as well. We, and I use the American football fan collective, we all knew  Ray Rice did something very bad in that elevator, as have many other professional football players done similar bad deeds in the past. Yet we all keep watching, even as we shake our self-righteous heads in disbelief. Even if we weren't one of the 25,000 fans that cheered Ray Rice on his short return to the Ravens during preseason, we also tuned in to Thursday, Sunday, and Monday night football this week, just like every week prior. And until TMZ did all our dirty work, we pushed an ugly episode into the recesses of our consciousness, like it was a moment we'd all rather forget.

Yes, this is a football problem. But it's also a us problem, all us fans who make the NFL the unstoppable force it seems to have become. Do we want football or justice? Because right now, for at least this moment, we're all having to choose. With our tickets, our TVs, and our time. It's a decision we will each make this Sunday afternoon, when we do or don't partake in America's pastime. Watch and support the league, or don't and send a message. Then, perhaps Ray Rice and Roger Goodell will know what's it's like to finally not be watched.

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