RB Ray Rice To Be Suspended For Two Games

[Craic]

Honestly, I had completely forgotten about the Harrison incident, even though at the time I was one of the minority of fans who wanted him off the team. Hell, I'll even give you that the only differences between the two are that Rice was caught doing it on camera, which led to a media shitstorm, which is the main reason why he was suspended at all. At any rate, what Rice did was wrong and should have been punished more severely. Same as Harrison. I have zero tolerance for any man beating a woman, regardless of the circumstances.

I completely agree with you and think that both of them should have been punished quite a bit more than they were. I'll even agree with you and others that the way the punishments are done is out of balance. But, my greater point here is that Goodell's punishments ARE consistent within the scope of like offenses, regardless of team.

Fuck Goodell anyway. That sentiment is simply something you are going to have to accept, because it's not just Steelers fans who hate that man's guts.

That's fine. But look down this thread, or any other of a thousand threads on this forum, and what you end up reading is "We're being victimized by Goodell!" "Oh, Woe is us!" That, is a load of bull. Don't like how he's pushing for rules that change hitting? Great. That's a legitimate argument. But I'm serious, the victim mentality on this board concerning Goodell is reaching epic proportions . . . Seahawk proportions, even.

[steelreserve]

With the Harrison thing, one of the reasons he wasn't punished more harshly was because there was originally some doubt as to whether he actually laid hands on the woman. The first report of "violence" was just that he trashed the house - smashed a phone and kicked down a door, if I recall - and it didn't come out that Harrison actually struck her until he admitted it a year or two later. Obviously that doesn't excuse him, and no doubt he should've been punished for it if it had been known, but I think the issue was that it wasn't clear what happened, even in the police report.

That's fine. But look down this thread, or any other of a thousand threads on this forum, and what you end up reading is "We're being victimized by Goodell!" "Oh, Woe is us!" That, is a load of bull. Don't like how he's pushing for rules that change hitting? Great. That's a legitimate argument. But I'm serious, the victim mentality on this board concerning Goodell is reaching epic proportions . . . Seahawk proportions, even.

It is getting out of hand. I think Goodell sucks like hell, but the idea that he's out to get us to the point of rigging games, etc., is ridiculous. Did he have it out for one or two specific PLAYERS, namely Clark and Harrison? Absolutely. But this idea that there's some grand conspiracy is a load of bull. Most of it is just Goodell being incompetent or overbearing in general, and every so often it affects us, so we mistake it for bias.


That video of the twerking Velma has been EVERYWHERE lately. Although it's also been suggested that she's air-drying her coochie, or having trouble pooping.

Also, so glad this actually made it into the smilies

[GBMelBlount]

An arrogant, egotistical attorney with a god complex.

How rare.

[fansince'76]

An arrogant, egotistical attorney with a god complex.

How rare.

Actually, Goodell isn't even an attorney, but he definitely gives off that "vibe," which is even worse...

[fansince'76]

That's fine. But look down this thread, or any other of a thousand threads on this forum, and what you end up reading is "We're being victimized by Goodell!" "Oh, Woe is us!" That, is a load of bull. Don't like how he's pushing for rules that change hitting? Great. That's a legitimate argument. But I'm serious, the victim mentality on this board concerning Goodell is reaching epic proportions . . . Seahawk proportions, even.

Just kidding!

[GBMelBlount]

Actually, Goodell isn't even an attorney, but he definitely gives off that "vibe," which is even worse...

So he just plays one on TV?

[86WARD]

Roethlisberger. Not convicted. Not charged. 6 games for conduct detrimental to the league? Off field issue. Steelers or not, it's bull shit that Rice didn't get more games than the 2 he got for his off field issue.

[GBMelBlount]

86Ward

Roethlisberger. Not convicted. Not charged. 6 games for conduct detrimental to the league? Off field issue. Steelers or not, it's bull shit that Rice didn't get more games than the 2 he got for his off field issue.

Seems like Goodell has a thing for big black c*ck.

Better put a lock on your zipper XT.

[Craic]

Just kidding!

Naa, just tired of reading it all over the board. Funny pic though

[SteelerFanInStl]

It's not just Steeler fans that think the 2 game suspension is BS. Take a look around the internet and pretty much everyone but Ravens fans are yelling about it.

[Butch]

Naa, just tired of reading it all over the board. Funny pic though

Guess it's time to give up reading then

[Craic]

Guess it's time to give up reading then

Nope, I'll still hold out hope that we don't completely descend into Seahawk levels of victim mentality.

[Nadroj 20]

I think it's messed up he's only getting 2 games, but I can't believe no one is more upset that he's basically getting a slap on the wrist from a legal standpoint. Screw football games, why isn't this guy doing some jail time??

[Craic]

I think it's messed up he's only getting 2 games, but I can't believe no one is more upset that he's basically getting a slap on the wrist from a legal standpoint. Screw football games, why isn't this guy doing some jail time??

1. First offense
2. Participated in pretrial program
3. OMG - He's a football player!

In all fairness, again, I look at the Harrison situation, and it seems that it's about a normal sentence. In some ways, I think it's a crock. In others, well . . . I also can't see how going to prison and having to develop prison mentality to survive would cure a person of hitting someone else on the outside.

Don't get me wrong, he deserves more than he got and I am not at all happy about the way violence against women (especially when it's this blatant) is treated.

[steelreserve]

I think it's messed up he's only getting 2 games, but I can't believe no one is more upset that he's basically getting a slap on the wrist from a legal standpoint. Screw football games, why isn't this guy doing some jail time??

Really the reason is because if the victim doesn't decide to press the issue with the police (and many of them don't), then there's really not a hell of a lot they can do. They could force the issue and have a "state vs." case that takes a lot of time and money, and with an unsure outcome - or they can work out the first plea deal that comes along and mercifully ends the thing.

Not saying it's the best way it ought to turn out, because lord knows a lot of fucked-up individuals get away with some pretty brazen shit because of it (I know of at least a few cases in my "extended friends-of-friends-and-family" circle, and I'm sure so do most people). But the fact is that if the victim of a crime doesn't want to go to court, the government is probably not going to force it unless it's murder or attempted murder, or the person presents some other grave threat to the public. Having the DA's office in most cities be perpetually shorthanded and underfunded doesn't help that at all, but on the other hand, who wants to pay more taxes. That's the sad reality of it.

[Dwinsgames]

This thread is hilarious . . . in a pathetic, sad way.

If anyone wants to make a TRUE comparison, then the comparison here is NOT with Ben, but with James Harrison.

Harrison: slaps his girlfriend and is charged with simple assault and criminal mischief. He attends anger management training and charges are dropped. 0 fines, 0 suspensions.
Rice: Hits his fiance and is charged with felony assault. He enters a pretrial intervention program and the charges will be dropped (expunged, pretty much same deal as Harrison). $500,000 fine plus 2 game suspension and loss of pay.

But yeah, let's forget about that and all rail against Goodell because obviously, he has it in for the Steelers. Of course, I had a thread here at one time with all the fines and penalties that showed specifically that the Steelers WEREN'T targeted, but heck, let's skip any semblance of reality, shall we?

both accounts are horrid and should NEVER happen , but ....

hard to compare a slap , to knocking someone out cold and then dragging the body and consider them equal incidents ..

just sayin

[fansince'76]

I think it's messed up he's only getting 2 games, but I can't believe no one is more upset that he's basically getting a slap on the wrist from a legal standpoint. Screw football games, why isn't this guy doing some jail time??

He's a celebrity. Different standards of justice. If it were you or me or any other ham-n-egger, we would more than likely be doing some jail time.

Really the reason is because if the victim doesn't decide to press the issue with the police (and many of them don't), then there's really not a hell of a lot they can do. They could force the issue and have a "state vs." case that takes a lot of time and money, and with an unsure outcome - or they can work out the first plea deal that comes along and mercifully ends the thing.

Not saying it's the best way it ought to turn out, because lord knows a lot of fucked-up individuals get away with some pretty brazen shit because of it (I know of at least a few cases in my "extended friends-of-friends-and-family" circle, and I'm sure so do most people). But the fact is that if the victim of a crime doesn't want to go to court, the government is probably not going to force it unless it's murder or attempted murder, or the person presents some other grave threat to the public. Having the DA's office in most cities be perpetually shorthanded and underfunded doesn't help that at all, but on the other hand, who wants to pay more taxes. That's the sad reality of it.

Yeah, maybe, but the video evidence seemed pretty damning, IMO. It's one thing if it's a he said/she said situation and the woman chooses not to pursue it, but when you have it on camera, that's something else entirely, I would think.

Case in point - look at that Tony Farmer kid. He knocked the snot of his girlfriend in a very similar situation to this and got 3 years. His girlfriend also pleaded for leniency for him. No matter. And to my knowledge, that was Farmer's first offense too.

[Count Steeler]

Case in point - look at that Tony Farmer kid. He knocked the snot of his girlfriend in a very similar situation to this and got 3 years. His girlfriend also pleaded for leniency for him. No matter. And to my knowledge, that was Farmer's first offense too.

Goodell may have given him 3 games, considering kidnapping was also part of his offense. But, this suspension would have to wait until he was out of prison.

[Craic]

both accounts are horrid and should NEVER happen , but ....

hard to compare a slap , to knocking someone out cold and then dragging the body and consider them equal incidents ..

just sayin

I don't see much of a difference. Really, the weight of the offense shouldn't be based upon whether "she can take a hit" or not. Some woman would have been out cold in either case. Others (and I guarantee you I'm thinking of my aunts here—bunch of badass farmer girls) would probably step in and cold-cock them right back before calling 911. The only thing that differentiates these two situations is that Harrison went back to the scene as soon as the police showed up, then manned up and took responsibility immediately.

[zulater]

I don't see much of a difference. Really, the weight of the offense shouldn't be based upon whether "she can take a hit" or not. Some woman would have been out cold in either case. Others (and I guarantee you I'm thinking of my aunts here—bunch of badass farmer girls) would probably step in and cold-cock them right back before calling 911. The only thing that differentiates these two situations is that Harrison went back to the scene as soon as the police showed up, then manned up and took responsibility immediately.

Are you kidding me? By multiple accounts Rice hit her with an uppercut. She was knocked out cold. Big difference. Like comparing a fender bender at 5 mph to a head on collision at highway speed.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't care what his prior record was, what his excuse was, it should have been a minimum 8 game suspension with a chance of reduction to 6 games upon completion of anger management classes or something of the sort. He hit a woman with an uppercut! That's assault any way you cut it.

[ALLD]

Goodell favors a few teams and the Rats are one.

[tube517]

Welcome to the NFL where you can hit a woman harder than a player.

Sent from my GT-N7105 using Tapatalk

[Shoes]

I'm sure not a fan of Keith Olberman but he seems to be the only one raising his voice on this issue. He also brought up the Albert Haynesworth suspension, which I forgot about……5 games for tramping on the head of a player in a game.

[Shoes]

Hopefully Roger won't rest on this one.

http://news.yahoo.com/video/e-cupp-n...170319416.html


NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's punishment for Ravens RB Ray Rice shows he is inconsistent.


Once Roger Goodell thought it was cool to pose for a cover of Time magazine, the headline reading like this: The Enforcer. Goodell was going to take care of the bad guys in the National Football League like this was some sort of football version of “The Unforgiven,” with him as Clint Eastwood, just at much higher compensation.


Players routinely received four-game suspensions for violating the league’s drug policy, whether they say they accidentally used banned substances or not. There has been no ruling yet for Jim Irsay, picked up with $29,000 on him and pills, and his own arrest for driving while intoxicated. Goodell says that he is waiting for the legal system to play out, except that he never did that with Roethlisberger. And as Jim Trotter pointed out the other day on ESPN.com, Jimmy Haslam, the Browns owner, doesn’t even get a public rebuke from the commissioner after having to write a $92 million check for defrauding his customers.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/fo...#ixzz38jUJmXghRead more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/fo...#ixzz38iznUYH2

[HollywoodSteel]

This thread is hilarious . . . in a pathetic, sad way.

If anyone wants to make a TRUE comparison, then the comparison here is NOT with Ben, but with James Harrison.

Harrison: slaps his girlfriend and is charged with simple assault and criminal mischief. He attends anger management training and charges are dropped. 0 fines, 0 suspensions.
Rice: Hits his fiance and is charged with felony assault. He enters a pretrial intervention program and the charges will be dropped (expunged, pretty much same deal as Harrison). $500,000 fine plus 2 game suspension and loss of pay.

But yeah, let's forget about that and all rail against Goodell because obviously, he has it in for the Steelers. Of course, I had a thread here at one time with all the fines and penalties that showed specifically that the Steelers WEREN'T targeted, but heck, let's skip any semblance of reality, shall we?

I had a feeling you were going to find a way to defend Goodell on this one, and I had a feeling you were going to bring up the Harrison thing. I respect your opinion but I think you are somewhat right and somewhat wrong. You are right that Goodell has no bias against the Steelers in particular. This is tinfoil hat stuff and makes no sense. It isn't how Goodell thinks. Also it's hard to say that Goodell hasn't been good for the NFL as a business. That's his job and he's good at it. But since public perception of the shield is something he claims to be important, this makes him totally fair game to criticism.

Here's what I think of Goodell as a person. He cares not one tiny bit for fairness, justice, and human morality in the way he likes to come across. He is all about strategy and political expediency. Maybe that makes him the perfect CEO (and probably future politician) but, like I said, it makes him a fair target as a human being, because he could, if he wanted to, actually hold a constant moral standard that meant more to him than the bottom line.

You yourself have made the argument that once things start to change in the NFL, you can't compare penalties to ones that happened years ago. The NFL has changed. Goodell has made that more than clear. Some of us don't like some of that change but it is what it is. Player conduct penalties are nothing like they used to be so comparisons to events before the "big change" are no longer relevant. Maybe, from an objective standard, Harrison should have received a harsher punishment, but it's hard to know what is objectively the right punishment, so all we can judge is consistency and fairness from the point that Goodall announced to the world THAT THINGS ARE GOING TO CHANGE FROM NOW ON. That's why the comparison to the Ben suspension is relevant. (I won't compare this to drug suspensions, even though I think they should be rethought, but at least those are clearly drawn, unlike the personal conduct policy) With the Ben suspension Goodell said that he was drawing a line in the sand. Forget about what happened before that. At that point Goodell made it clear that you can be charged with nothing and convicted of nothing and I'll still suspend you 6 games (reducible to 4) to send a clear message about how you need to conduct yourself off the field. Remember, he didn't suspend Ben for rape. If so the suspension would have been inexcusable, the other way. The proper suspension for rape should be banned for life. He also didn't suspend Ben for being accused twice of something similar. That would be a ludicrous standard. Would that mean that if I had simply accused Ray Lewis of attempted murder (with not enough evidence or anything to charge him) then he should have been suspended as a result? That's just insane. No, Goodell kind of justified the suspension with conduct unbecoming, or something like that since Ben even admitted he did not represent the shield very well that night. So, by that standard, and that standard alone we need to draw the baseline minimum for suspending a player for misrepresenting the shield in his personal life. Again, we know that Ben was kind of an obnoxious jerk that night and that's all we know for sure, but that equals 6 reducible to 4. We know FOR SURE that Rice knocked his fiancee out. We know that he gave a non-apology that blamed the victim as much as himself. Therefore the Ben suspension, in any reasonable universe, has to be the BARE MINIMUM suspension for something like that.

But that would be in a world where the commish had any standard of fairness and precedent. But we know the truth. All he cares about is perception. He dropped the hammer on Ben because the story was getting a lot of mainstream press attention. They all said, "oh, Goodell has to come down hard on Ben. He HAS to!" So, of course he did. In this case, the mainstream press pretty much ignored the story until AFTER the suspension was handed down, and then they were all like WTF? So, Goodell simply miscalculated. If you want to claim that Goodell, in his heart of hearts, believes that he handed down the fair punishment in both those cases then you are simply lying to yourself because it doesn't compute. I have no doubt, that if Goodell had a time machine and could go back and increase the punishment on Rice he would, now that he realizes what actual humans with souls think about the punishment. Do you doubt this? Do you think he'd stick to his moral guns over public perception? There's no way in hell you believe that. And once you admit that, then you admit Goodell has no overriding sense of morality or fairness. He just sticks his finger in the wind and tries to calculate how hard it's blowing and in what direction. Does that make him Hitler? Of course not. Does that make him deserving of every ounce of criticism he's getting and more? You bet it does.

But he won't lose any sleep over it. This will pass and he'll go back to talking about player safety while pushing for an 18 game season. I'm just glad that he has to suffer at least a tiny bit of embarrassment over this. Although truthfully, I don't really know if he processes emotions in the same way that most people do.

[steelreserve]

You yourself have made the argument that once things start to change in the NFL, you can't compare penalties to ones that happened years ago. The NFL has changed. Goodell has made that more than clear. Some of us don't like some of that change but it is what it is. Player conduct penalties are nothing like they used to be so comparisons to events before the "big change" are no longer relevant. Maybe, from an objective standard, Harrison should have received a harsher punishment, but it's hard to know what is objectively the right punishment, so all we can judge is consistency and fairness from the point that Goodall announced to the world THAT THINGS ARE GOING TO CHANGE FROM NOW ON.

The funny thing about that is, for all Goodell's efforts to "clean up" player conduct, the same number of players continue to get in trouble for stupid shit off the field, year in and year out - only now there are random suspensions, and more media attention because of the random suspensions. Just like the player safety enforcement, it's all a big show for the media. I don't think anybody is, or ever was, under the illusion that the NFL is made up of well-adjusted model citizens who would otherwise be Rhodes Scholars if they weren't pro athletes. It's like he's trying to take everyone's naive ideas they had about their favorite sports stars from when they were 9 years old, and force it to be reality. Well guess what, Roj, this ain't Disneyland, so you can be as tough as you want and it's still not gonna happen.

All of what you said was an excellent post, by the way. I couldn't agree more.


edit: Also, I found this nice infographic that shows NFL arrests over the past decade-plus. Fun stuff if nothing else
http://arrests.thesportsgeeks.com/

[Shoes]

More news on Rice, Im happy Olberman isn't letting this pass.


http://www.boston.com/sports/football/2014/07/29/keith-olbermann-latest-take-ray-rice-strong/9UokPmo6ONv0htQFRgXt8M/story.html






Another jackass
http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/1...h-air-one-week

[vader29]

[SteelerFanInStl]

LOL, I like that one!

[zulater]

I was listening to the radio the other day and I heard Dan Lebretard try to draw a comparison between Rice's case and Big Ben's prior suspension. Now he wasn't the first, nor will he be the last to draw a parallel between the two. But his was without a doubt the stupidest one. By his account Rice's suspension was justified, because if rape gets you 6 games well it only stands to reason that spousal assault would only get you two.

And this my friends is why I'll never drop the torch in defending Ben. Because this idiot is far from alone in this stance. And more to the point, Goodell's actions did what the DA's office in Georgia couldn't do and forever tarred Ben guilty ( as never charged) You see what Lebretard and Goodell both did is they prosecuted a man absent of facts.

You see here's the difference between Rice's case and Ben's. In Rice's case it's indisputable a crime indeed took place. He took a plea, which means he did in fact admit to said crime. (not that he could deny it). His record can be expunged if he meets certain criteria over time.

Ben's" record" wont be however, because Ben's "record" doesn't exist anywhere except in the imagination of Flametard and Herr Commissioner and morons of similar thinking.


Ben's the only person in the history of sports who was punished for a totally unsupported and unsubstantiated allegation.

And every time for the history of being in sports that someone commits an act worthy of suspension Ben will forever be dragged to the fray because of that asshole Goodell.

I hope there comes a day when Ben lets loose with both barrels ( figuratively speaking) and calls that asshole out.