Wednesday, April 24, 2024

Did the NFL have the full Rice tape?

First Published:

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NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has been saying all week that the league did not see the shocking video of running back Ray Rice knocking his wife unconscious until a few days ago. But tonight, the Associated Press says the NFL had a copy of it in April. And the AP report now has both the league, and the commissioner scrambling to avoid another embarrassing loss

It was already a bad week for NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. Today, it got immeasurably worse. While Goodell again repeated his claim that league officials had never seen the damning video from that Las Vegas elevator: “No one in the NFL, to my knowledge, and I had been asked that same question and the answer to that is no.”

Doubters and critics took him to task. One of them was Dewan Williams. The wife of former NFL player Wally Williams. She too, suffered abuse at the hands of her husband: “But when you reach out, you know, you’re left on an island by yourself. People disassociate themselves from you. The NFL turns their back on you.”

And then Williams hinted that Goodell was manufacturing a league wide cover up: “I think he’s full of it. I think that it’s disheartening for them to even say that they had no idea what was on that tape.”

And just a few hours later, it appeared she may be right. The Associated Press reported that a law enforcement official claims to have sent a DVD of Rice punching his current wife in that elevator to league officials — on April 9th.

The Associated Press says the unidentified source played a 12 second voicemail from an NFL office number, confirming the video was in league hands — but says he had no further communication with any NFL employee, after that.

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello quickly released a statement saying the league had “no knowledge” of the DVD, and “would look into it.”

But the call for Goodell to step down grew louder by the hour — with the National Organization for Women taking the lead:

Terry O’Neill, NOW President: “The NFL doesn’t have an individualized Ray Rice problem, it has a violence against women problem.”

At this point, no one is betting that Roger Goodell is going anywhere, in a hurry. While he admits himself that he hasn’t handled the Ray Rice scandal very well, he’s done an excellent job for NFL owners. Since taking over as commissioner in 2006, he’s brought in millions of dollars for those owners — and they will be reluctant to cut ties with him, even in the shadow of this daunting set-back for the league.

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