Random Rant - Ray Rice, Penn State

Monday was a big news day in sports.  Unfortunately, the two biggest stories came off the field.  The first story broke while most of America was asleep when TMZ released video footage from inside the casino elevator in Atlantic City, where Ray Rice knocked out his then fiancée, now wife, Janay.  That led to media backlash and outrage and eventually, the termination of Rice’s contract with the Baltimore Ravens.  The other major story was the removal of all remaining sanctions handed down by the NCAA over Penn State University and their football program stemming from the Jerry Sandusky Scandal.

Both are very high profile stories; both reach far outside the sports world and into the social spectrum of our society.

First, let’s start with the Ray Rice incident and the fallout from it.  To summarize, Ray Rice is a coward who assaulted a woman.  He was suspended for just two games by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, which in itself was an absolute joke, as well as being completely disrespectful to every female football fan out there.  Now, we see what actually happened on the casino elevator that night, and Ray Rice is out of a job as his former team, the Baltimore Ravens, released him.

There are so many different things that are wrong stemming from this incident and so many questions that need to be asked that haven’t been to this point, so that is where we begin.

To the NFL Owners:
How is Roger Goodell still the commissioner of your league after how poorly he handled this incident?

Please don’t let this be simply about money.  Yes, Goodell has made the league a ton of money since taking over in 2006, as the league revenues have nearly doubled over the eight years under his watch, but please don’t let that be the reason.  He has also pushed away a large portion of the female audience, which the league has worked so hard to build up, with the way he has handled this situation.  The NFL is now the punchline of jokes because of all the player personal issues that are going on league wide, and you have this guy representing you and divvying out these soft punishments.  How can you still think he is the man you want representing the shield and your league?

To the state of New Jersey and Atlantic City:
How was Ray Rice not charged with anything stemming from this incident?

Yes, you read that correctly.  Ray Rice was never charged for any wrongdoing for knocking out a woman in an elevator, then dragging her unconscious body through a hotel casino.  Atlantic City prosecutor, James McClain, decided to not file charges against Rice after he entered himself in a pre-trial counseling program.  You cannot tell me that the state Attorney General’s office didn’t have access to the hotel security videos.

To the fans of football who had the sudden outrage over seeing the video today:
What did you think happened on the elevator?  Did you really need to see the video of Rice punching his fiancée in the head and seeing her head bounce off the railing in the elevator to be upset about it?

Everyone saw the video of Rice and Palmer entering the elevator and then leaving the elevator.  What did people think happened to her when she walked perfectly fine into the elevator, but need to be dragged out of it just seconds later?  I understand that people were upset with Rice all along, but I can’t figure out the uproar Monday simply because people saw the video from inside the elevator.

To the Baltimore Ravens:
What took so long?

Somehow, people are praising the Ravens organization for releasing Rice on Monday, less than 10 hours after the video was made public.  But what about the previous 206 days since the incident actually occurred?  This is the same organization that came out publicly to support Rice and placed blame on Palmer for her role in the incident.  In fact, during a May press conference with Rice and his wife, the team even tweeted out, “Janay Rice says she deeply regrets the role that she played the night of the incident.” REALLY?!  That tweet remained up until after the team released Rice Monday afternoon.  It was then deleted from the team account.

Let’s face it, the only reason that the Ravens released Rice on Monday was to save face.  If they really felt that what Rice did in that elevator was deserving of being cut, they would have done it in February.  Or, if they didn’t think that he was punished hard enough from the NFL, they would have done it after Goodell announced that joke of a suspension.  The only reason they did it now was because the public saw the same video that the organization saw 2 months ago (according to reports).  So after all that, after everyone saw what we all pretty much could have assumed happened in that elevator, they cut him?  It was nothing more than giving into public and media pressure.  They don’t deserve any praise or credit for doing something that they should have done 5 months ago.

Now on to Penn State. 

It was announced Monday afternoon that the NCAA has removed the bowl ban for the Penn State football team effective immediately.  They also will reinstate a full roster of scholarships beginning with the 2015-16 season.

I have two lines of thinking about this decision by the NCAA.  First, the NCAA has screwed up how they have handled the sanctions from the very beginning so I’m not surprised they continue to screw it up.  And secondly, why now?

When the Freeh Report came out in 2012, the president of the NCAA announced a number of punishments for the university, the school’s athletic department, and the football program.  These punishments included forfeiting wins, sacrificing scholarships, forgoing bowl games and paying a large fine.  From day 1, I never really understood the reasoning behind these penalties.  They seemed poorly thought out and they penalized the wrong people.  I think we can all agree the events that took place leading to these sanctions were horrible and disgusting crimes and certainly, the people involved should be punished.  However, it was not something that current players at Penn State should have been penalized for.

To me, taking scholarships away and banning bowl games were two of the punishments that made zero sense.  Taking away scholarships creates safety issues.  You are demanding young kids to play more than what they are capable of because they don’t have adequate back-ups.  You are also getting undersized players, who are now playing at a level that probably exceeds their athletic abilities, because of the need of more walk-ons, just to fill out the roster.  As for banning bowl games, you are taking away a reward for the current players for something that happened when these kids were in elementary school.

As for forfeiting the wins by Joe Paterno, I understand the idea behind it, but those games happened, whether you want to acknowledge them or not.  You can’t just suddenly say games didn’t occur.  They did.  I realize that from the NCAA’s point of view, they went back to the earliest date of the scandal and wanted to erase everything that happened to Penn State football from that point on.  Unfortunately, what we all wish was erased from the scandal will never be forgotten by those victims.

So how do you punish a multi-million dollar business known as college football for a program as large as Penn State’s?  You hit them in the pocket book.  Considering Penn State spent over $20M for their football program alone last year, asking them to pay $60M over 4 years isn’t much of a penalty either.

I have said all along that Penn State should have gotten the Death Penalty from the NCAA for a two-year span.  Remember, one of the big problems according to the Freeh Report and the NCAA was the “Football Culture” at Penn State.  What is the easiest way to change a bad culture? Eliminate it. 

Had Penn State had a 2-year ban from football, they would already be back to a full roster with the ability to go to a bowl this season.  It would not have affected any current players or created safety issues for them.  Players were given the ability to transfer when the sanctions came down, and would have been able to do so had they received the Death Penalty.  Players that didn’t want to transfer and play elsewhere would have been able to stay at Penn State and get a degree from a highly regarded university.

The only other option for a penalty would have been a TV ban.  It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but when you take away the revenue stream that is the TV contracts in major college football, the athletic department and football team feel it.  It also makes the team basically non-existent to the fan base that created the negative “Football Culture” the NCAA talked about.  If a 2-year Death Penalty seemed too much, I would have given Penn State a 10-year TV ban.

As for the timing of this announcement, I don’t get it. 

Penn State scheduled a game in Ireland this year to get around not being eligible for a bowl game at the end of the season.  So instead of a bowl game, the team went to Ireland.  Now, after manipulating the system, the NCAA declares that the “Football Culture” is no longer a problem at the university.  It seems to me that not much has changed if, while on punishment, the school figured out a loophole in that punishment so as to still go away on a trip for their team and their fans to take part in.  Not sure that makes much sense.

As I mentioned before, I don’t like banning teams from bowl games, but when you go above and beyond to work around the rules so they fall in your favor, you lose me a bit.  If the scholarships are coming back for the 2015-16 football season and you already know that the team has been to Ireland this year, why wouldn’t the NCAA just remove the bowl ban next year when they give the scholarships back?

Then again, why am I even trying to make sense of something the NCAA does?