NFL didn't need Mueller Report or smoking gun video to do obvious in Rice case – yet it failed
For the last time: it was never about the video.
The structure of the 96-page Mueller Report, which was released in full on Thursday, says everything about the NFL's inept investigation of the Ray Rice incident and the ensuing chase for a smoking gun. The report goes on for much of its first five pages about the whereabouts of the video of Rice punching then-fiancee Janay Palmer last February, including entire sections on searched phone records, examined emails, mailroom interviews and even a tip line for would-be informants.
Then, on Page 6 of the report, the real bombshell, which was known all along:
"And by June 6, the League had a copy of the grand jury indictment, alleging that Rice 'did attempt to cause significant bodily injury to [Palmer], and/or did purposely or knowingly cause significant bodily injury to [Palmer] and/or under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life, did recklessly cause significant bodily injury to [Palmer].'"
That quote describes as much as any video, any casino worker, any law enforcement authority ever could. Rice "did attempt to cause significant bodily injury" and he showed "extreme indifference to the value of human life." What exactly could seeing the video provide that wasn't already apparent?
That's one of the central takeaways of this entire mess: that there needed to be a long and drawn out investigation after all the necessary information was acquired. There has been months of suspicion that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell saw the tape and lied about it, when his real failure all along was in acting as if the contents of the tape was a punishment-altering surprise. Goodell and his fellow executives could have told themselves that it was "only" a slap, rather than a punch in that elevator, but a slap is not "extreme indifference to the value of human life." Extreme indifference. That indicates the need for an extreme punishment.
Even more upsetting is that while Goodell's supposed understanding of what happened at the Revel Casino that night shifted, the facts seemed clear right away. According to the Mueller Report, the first word the NFL got about the incident came from Baltimore Sun reporter Aaron Wilson, who presented the league with an account of the Rice punch based on information from a casino-based source.
"It was horrific," the source told Wilson. "It shocked the conscience. He knocked her out with one punch. She was out for three minutes. He dragged her out like a limp noodle. He hit her so hard. It was unbelievable. We gave her ice packs for her head."
If that source were giving this commentary as he watched the video, it would hardly have varied. Two days before the first TMZ video came out last February, a senior labor relations counsel for the league sent an email saying, "He either punched a female acquaintance or knocked out, with one-single punch to the head, his fiancé [sic]." Again, there is not much room for interpretation there.
Then, a day after that first TMZ video, with the world still coming to terms with what happened, NFL director of investigative services John Raucci sent this email: "Between us – DV [domestic violence] is DV and if the Commissioner is going to come down hard on the guy he should do so; I don't care who started the incident."
If Goodell himself had this exact reaction, and stuck to it, the entire league would have been much better off today. "DV is DV" is basically the message that the NFL has "learned" through all of this, and it was conveyed almost immediately in a Feb. 20 email from an NFL employee.
Instead of "DV is DV," we got a what-really-happened-inside-that-elevator wild goose chase that discredited the entire domestic violence prevention movement, and showed the stubbornness and foolishness of the league. This was repeated again in the Greg Hardy case and in the Adrian Peterson case. We had fairly clear evidence of serious wrongdoing, followed by a two-sides-to-every-story hedging that ended up blowing up in the NFL's face. In each situation, the facts executives were waiting for ended up being worse than the initial damning facts. We didn't need a video for Rice, for Peterson or for Hardy.
Some people will always think Goodell is a liar, but really he's a denier. That has been the problem with his reaction to the sport's concussion crisis, and it was the problem here. If he read "extreme indifference to the value of human life" like any other employer would, the suspension would have been more than two games and the long road to the Mueller Report would have never been taken.
The conclusion of the report, although accurate, is obvious: "The League's investigation should strive to learn more than just the status and outcome of the criminal case." And further: "Where there is sufficient evidence that the player violated the Policy, it may be in the interests of the League to act quickly, even while the criminal case is open."
In other words, there's no need to see a video when all of the evidence points to serious misbehavior. Ninety-six pages and all these months get us only to a conclusion Goodell should have drawn in 30 seconds:
DV is DV.
