OK, so now we know how and where NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell stands on Ray Rice having flattened his fiancée, knocking her out, and, perhaps, Goodell’s stance on matters relating to players’ abuse of women.
Goodell doesn’t stand particularly tall or strong.
Not to excuse him, but perhaps to explain him, he may realize that establishing a strong precedent not only would annually deprive the NFL of some of its best players, it would lead to protracted and expensive lawsuits, with the perps, real and alleged, claiming to be the victims of salary-depriving decisions outside the laws of the land. Always follow the money!
And a two-game suspension seems light enough to barter the silence of the NFL Players’ Association, and its lawyers.
Yet, what is the NFLPA’s position on such matters? It’s as important as the NFL’s, no?
Shouldn’t the NFLPA provide the public with what it feels is the proper internal punishment — some sentencing guidelines — for players given to domestic violence and/or sexual assault?
That’s another growing problem within TV and radio: As shot-callers continue to choose to hire the NFL’s worst acts to serve as studio commentators, from where is unfettered and unrestricted common decency to be advocated? From where will it be spoken and heard?
Meanwhile, this has become — perhaps inevitably, with more to come — a summer loaded with big-time football players who brutalize women.
In the 24-hour period that included Goodell’s announcement of Rice’s two-game suspension, Kendall Sanders and Montrel Meander, both University of Texas wide receivers, were charged with the sexual assault of a UT student who said she was raped by the two in an on-campus dorm.
In that same period, University of Georgia lineman Jonathan Taylor, 6-foot-4, 340, was charged with the 2:40 a.m. alleged choking and punching of his girlfriend from an on-campus dorm.
Earlier this month, Alex Figueroa and JaWand Blue, both University of Miami LBs, admitted to raping an alcohol-incapacitated 17-year-old UM student in an on-campus dorm.
A week later, ex-Giant Luke Petitgout was in court to answer charges of assaulting his wife — again.
And, according to an extensive investigation, this spring, Florida State’s star QB Jameis Winston, with the winks and nods of the friendly, local FSU football-happy legal system, likely escaped an indictment for sexual assault.
And plenty more where those came from.
Anyway, Rice was given a two-game sentence for punching out his fiancée. But maybe he only hit her once.
Get Sirius: Stephen A. never the right answer
But why has Smith become sports TV and radio executives’ ideal go-to guy in the pursuit of diversity?
He’s a circle-talking windsock. He simultaneously knows everything and nothing, while he dances in place until the con becomes apparent, until you realize that you’re either listening but not hearing, or hearing but not listening.
Apparently, last week he said something outrageously insensitive about domestic violence, how women shouldn’t provoke men. Yet, how would anyone, even if he or she was listening, know?
Ever drive late at night, south of here, trolling through the radio to find something to help you through, and you land on a station with some preacher spitting and hollering a lot of genuine biblical gibberish? There ya go.
A guy in the sports media business, Saturday, said that Smith-to-SiriusXM would be “great news. I don’t have SiriusXM.”
♦ SNY’s Yankees reporter, Sweeny Murti, Friday night on “Sports Nite,” went with a Christmas-in-July Candy Land angle as per Friday’s win against the Jays:
“Hiroki Kuroda had to navigate so much trouble it seemed he had to cross through the seven levels of the Candy Cane Forest, through the Sea of Swirly, Twirly Gumdrops, and then somehow got through five and two-thirds for the win.”
Well, alrighty, then.
♦ The death, at 93, of 5-7, highly skilled basketball lifer and Harlem Globetrotters’ foil Red Klotz, on July 12, brought to attention Tim Kelly’s recent book, “The Legend of Red Klotz: How Basketball’s Loss Leader Won Over the World — 14,000 Times.” It’s a fun, fascinating read, loaded with old pictures and photos of yellowed Coming To Town! posters. To order: Comteqpublishing.com or through Amazon.
♦ CBS’s Peter Kostis, Saturday, interviewed Canadian Open contender, Canada’s Graham DeLaet, after his round. Kostis, with breezy, relaxed, engaging questions, pulled similar answers from DeLaet. Yet, when Kostis conducts such interviews with Tiger Woods, he’s as tight as Tupperware, tiptoeing and groveling as if Woods wears a “Do Not Disturb” warning. And Kostis is hardly alone.
YES gives its best shot
A sensational super slow-mo close-up was shown by YES during Sunday’s Blue Jays-Yankees game: Jose Bautista, off the very end of his bat, nipped a pitch foul, rendering the ball’s cover ripped and gouged. YES followed with a still shot of what was left of it. Fabulous!
♦ Sunday night’s MLB/ESPN Sunday number was Dodgers-Giants, a sensible 5 p.m. start for the home crowd. Yet, in April, MLB/ESPN makes the Yanks, Red Sox, Phillies and Orioles the Sunday home teams, 8 p.m. starts. Bud Selig has made it clear: He isn’t a people guy; he’s a “revenue” guy.
♦ How is it that John Sterling can tell us that a “backdoor slider missed by an inch” and that a fastball “painted the black,” but he can’t tell us whether the ball was caught, hit the wall or cleared it?
♦ Why we love Curtis Granderson: Sunday in Milwaukee he ended the second with a full-speed sliding catch in foul territory, then immediately handed the ball to a kid. In the top of the third, he ran hard all the way on a stand-up double hit so deep others would have been trotting, watching, styling…sliding.
♦ When are media and fans going to realize the Mets’ lack of spending has less to do with being cheap than being greedy, as in ownership’s love affair with Bernie Madoff?
♦ How to know if you’re old, or, at least, trending: You recall Bobby Cox, 28-year-old rookie, playing third for the 1968, 83-79 Yankees.
♦ Last question: How long before we’re told this is Derek Jeter’s “walk-off season,” his “walk-off game” approaching?