Sep 10, 2014 4 min read

“I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here.”

Capt. Louis Renault, “Casablanca”

When National Football League grand poobah Roger Goodell issued his slap-on-the-wrist, two-game suspension to the Baltimore Ravens’ Ray Rice as punishment for Rice’s assault on his girlfriend, now wife, it was hard to imagine that the bumbling commissioner could do anything more embarrassing, at least in the short term.

Au contraire!

Anyone with even a passing interest in football or who paid cursory attention to the news no doubt had seen the video showing Rice dragging his unconscious then-fiancée off an elevator at an Atlantic City hotel and casino as if she were a side of beef. Even the see-no-evil, hear-no evil, speak-no-evil folks at NFL headquarters had to presume that Janay Palmer had not come down with a case of the vapors or slipped on an ill-placed banana peel inside that conveyance. She had, of course, been rendered unconscious by the fist of Ray Rice. In fact, it was common knowledge at the time that there was another video, this one taken inside the elevator, that showed Rice knocking Palmer into next week.

But the NFL either could not be bothered to make a concerted effort to get and view that video, or it really didn’t want to see it. We’d guess the latter.

But TMZ Sports, the same folks who brought us the audio recordings of now-deposed NBA owner Donald Sterling’s racist rants, DID want to see the video. It went to the lengths necessary to obtain it, and earlier this week, the online outlet presented it for the world to see.

And, as expected, it isn’t pretty. Rice and Palmer are shown having a tiff on the elevator, and as an angry Palmer approaches Rice, he lays her out cold with a haymaker.

For the NFL and Rice’s immediate employer, the Ravens, the release of the video was a major “Uh-oh” moment.

It was a matter of mere hours before the Ravens announced that they had severed all ties with Rice, a man they previously had treated as a near-saint who just had a bad moment. The NFL followed swiftly with an indefinite suspension of Rice, who got off next to scot-free when his case was in the criminal “justice” system.

Goodell, certainly no stranger to bumbling and ham-handedness, said the video changed everything. He said no one at the league’s main office had ever seen the video before. A reasonable person might ask – heck, they might shout – Why?!

The NFL’s lame excuse is that when it asked law enforcement for all the materials pertaining to the case, the video from inside the elevator was not provided. Again, it’s reasonable to ask why the NFL didn’t make a harder push to get the video from authorities, or to get it from another source. Our guess is that the league really didn’t want to obtain that evidence. TMZ said the video was “tough” to get. But that’s for TMZ. The great and powerful NFL, if it were so inclined, should have been able to obtain it without breaking much of a sweat. In fact, the hotel where the beating occurred said it would have been more than happy to give the video to the league, had it been asked.

Of course, league officials had listened to Palmer’s story of the night in question – while the man who attacked her sat right next to her.

We have to wonder how the NFL owners, who employ Goodell, feel about the league being made to look like a bunch of uncaring boobs. When you compare Goodell’s “leadership” with that of his predecessors, Pete Rozelle and Paul Tagliabue, well, it’s not a flattering comparison for Goodell.

And it seems likely to us that it’s only a matter of time before Goodell botches something else. Journalist and ESPN commentator Michael Wilbon summed it up perfectly in just a few words: “The job seems too big for him.”