who will be on the field first:Ray Rice or Josh Gordon

[DemPGH]

This inevitably brings up Roger Goodell, who I have been reading about most of the afternoon and who I think has been really horrible overall. Granted, he represents the interests of the owners, but I mean aside from that. All commissioners do that. There have been his rule changes, the fact that he actually wants more penalties in games, his desire to reinvent everything, the arbitrary fines conducted by a star chamber like group of people who sit and review game film, and now, if it is confirmed that Goodell knew of Rice punching out his wife previously, Goodell has got to go. I definitely prefer a more hands-off commissioner like Tagliabu, who actually understands what football is and maybe has some clue as to how to handle this stuff. Goodell is the worst sort of reactionary, approaches everything negatively, and has fostered a shocking level of resentment and distrust in almost everyone. We don't need him to reinvent football, we need him to go reinvent himself someplace else.

I heard someone from NOW speaking about how we have "to do a better job raising our young men" and blah, blah, blah, and I thought, yeah, but what about raising our young women to make better choices in who their mates are?? It's well documented that it's far more difficult than one would think to sever oneself from an abusive relationship because people tend to normalize extreme behavior that they are close to, even if they recognize it as extreme. This situation needs help, not just FINES and SUSPENSIONS!

The whole situation is a mess - on one level I understand Rice's wife ripping the NFL for how it handled this, for Ray's ouster, and for basically wanting the NFL out of her personal life, but that's because this was so badly mishandled throughout by the NFL and Goodell, which should come as no surprise, and so I think we're beyond the point of no return. This was screwed up, Goodell is a disaster, and Rice needs help.