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There is a new shot heard 'round the world now, and it is the shot Ray Rice threw at Janay Palmer on Valentine's Day weekend at the Revel Casino Hotel, now out of business the way Ray Rice is, and the way Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner, will be if he has lied to us about any of this.
It is no longer in dispute, not even in the NFL offices on Park Ave., that Goodell has made a mess of this thing from the start. It is why he is paying a steep price for it, and may eventually pay with his job. In that way, nothing has really changed even with a new story from the Associated Press saying it has a law enforcement official who in April sent the NFL a copy of the video we all saw on Monday after TMZ.com posted it, the one of Rice throwing that hook to the face of the woman he eventually married:
If it can be proved that Goodell, who says he didn't see that video until Monday morning, actually saw it back in April, then he is through. He will be the first NFL commissioner to be fired from that job, leave a job as big as we have ever had in American sports the way Nixon left his after Watergate.
Of course it is open season on Goodell now, with even the National Organization for Women calling for him to resign. They sound more than somewhat like the media, although if people in our business lost jobs when we were wrong, and sometimes egregiously and aggressively wrong, the unemployment numbers in this country would be much worse than they already are.
Somehow, because of the way Goodell has bungled his handling of the Rice matter from the time he handed the guy only a two-game suspension, he is the one now treated as being as bad as Ray Rice, as if it is Goodell who is the bad guy now and not a football player who hit a woman the way he used to get hit on a football field.
Somehow, because of the continuing fallout from that punch Rice threw in Atlantic City, an almost nuclear fallout, it is as if Goodell is the criminal here and not Rice.
SEAN GARDNER/REUTERS
Rice is hiding, bunkered down with crisis managers. Besides, we're punched out with him. So it's Goodell's turn.
And again and again: If he lied - and I still don't believe he did - then he deserves whatever kind of beating he catches, and deserves to leave his job in disgrace.
But it was Pete Hamill, my dear friend and one of the great newspapermen this business has ever produced, a giant of the game, who once told me this when he was editing the Daily News:
'Charges are not arrests. Arrests are not indictments. Indictments are not convictions.'
We had the conversation because there was this rush to judgment, by some of the most respected people in the newspaper business, after a couple of Dallas Cowboys were accused of raping a woman at gunpoint. At that time, it just seemed like something a couple of Dallas Cowboys would do. Except they sure had not. The woman made it up.
Matt York/AP
This law enforcement official from New Jersey, the one who says he sent the inside-the-elevator video to the NFL five months ago - and one who does not want his identity revealed because he is fearful of the consequences of sending that video to the league - says that he did what he did as a whistle-blowing truth teller, that he wanted Roger Goodell to see that video before he issued his original suspension of Ray Rice. This man also has a recording of a woman at the NFL saying that she had received the DVD and how terrible it was.
Maybe we will find out this DVD, the whole truth about the Ray Rice case, now that the NFL has hired former FBI director Robert Mueller to conduct an independent investigation of the league's handling of that case, that investigation to be overseen by John Mara of the Giants and Art Rooney of the Steelers. Maybe, when the investigation is finally made public, we will have all of our questions answered about what this law enforcement guy from Jersey did, and how; find out why, if the Jersey law enforcement guy thought he was in possession of such a crucial piece of evidence for Goodell, why he didn't send it directly to the commissioner himself, and not the woman who told him on a recording that she had received it.
Something else worth knowing? If this law enforcement man wanted Goodell to have all possible relevant information before making his decision on Ray Rice and what he did to Janay Palmer that night, why wouldn't he reach back out to the National Football League in July and ask if Goodell had actually seen the elevator tape? If this guy wanted to save Goodell from himself, what reason could he possibly have for not following up once Goodell had handed down his suspension?
Goodell has looked bad for a while on this thing, we know that already. Now he has to reach out to Robert Mueller to essentially investigate his handling of it. The commissioner looked defensive when he sat down with Norah O'Donnell of CBS on Tuesday night. I said it on Wednesday: Somehow it was Goodell who looked like the defendant in this matter. He is the one who looked like the perp.
But more than a defendant and more than a perp, Goodell has just made himself into something much easier for everybody now: An easy target. It is still worth remembering he isn't automatically guilty because he looks guilty, or because a source says he is. The guilty party remains a bum who thinks it's all right to hit a woman.
It remains to be seen if Ray Rice knocked out the commissioner of the National Football League that night as well as Janay Palmer. Shot heard 'round the world.Ro
Posted by Unknown on Thursday, September 11, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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