Imrem: No doubt about it, Goodell must go

Roger Goodell probably can't wait for Week 2 of the NFL season to start.

He and his league can retreat into watching large men run into each other, scramble each other's brains and generate huge amounts of revenue.

For three hours during each game, Goodell can get back to being the NFL commissioner whose specialty is squeezing every potential dollar out of football for the football owners who pay his exorbitant salary.

Of course, that's if Goodell survives until kickoff Thursday night.

Sort of like the president of the United States is the country's commander in chief, the commissioner of the NFL is the league's chief moral enforcement officer.

Goodell has relished the duties of judge, jury and executioner in all matters of impropriety.

Judging by his performance in that capacity during the Ray Rice case, Goodell should resign as commissioner and let the NFL see whether someone else can clean up his mess.

It's tragically amusing that there's any doubt that Goodell should be out of office and the locks on the door changed.

Once "what did he know and when did he know it?" is asked of a CEO, confidence in him is shot.

Goodell's time certainly is up when the TMZ website - the new conscience of sports - portrays him wearing a "see-no-evil" blindfold.

How could any business mismanage a situation more than the NFL has this one? How could Goodell put the league in a worse position? How could he remain commissioner after the humiliation heaped on the business?

I'm all for second chances and believe that, after a number of qualifiers and conditions are met, Ray Rice should be eligible to play in the NFL again.

Rice would have to complete a domestic-battery diversion program, pass all the written and verbal tests to indicate that he is rehabilitated and then find a team, fan base and community that will have him.

Maybe nobody would want to hire Rice, as much because of his diminished skills as a running back as because he punched a woman in a hotel elevator.

But a person - athlete or otherwise - can change and become a positive force in society.

So much for Ray Rice's future.

Now for Roger Goodell's.

The commissioner deserves a second chance in his career but not in his current chair as NFL commissioner. Goodell has squandered the privilege to head America's premier sports league, and it's time for him and it to move on.

Commissioners should be held to higher standards than players are. For example, Bud Selig never should have continued running Major League Baseball after being the sultan of steroids during the 1990s.

Roger Goodell likewise shouldn't continue running the NFL after contributing to the Ray Rice debacle.

Goodell might not have lied along the way concerning the case. He might not have ever seen the smoking-gun tape. He might even be capable of being an agent for change in the future.

But during Goodell's watch as commissioner, the NFL has plunged into an awfully embarrassing series of events.

Goodell inherited a domestic battery issue in the NFL and has done little to attack the problem.

Then when the Ray Rice case provided a defining moment, Goodell wasn't up to the assignment.

Since Rice assaulted his then fiancee/now wife in February, everything Goodell and the NFL have done has had b-o-t-c-h-e-d written all over it.

Make that B-O-T-C-H-E-D in capital letters.

Longtime owners of legacy teams like the McCaskeys in Chicago, Rooneys in Pittsburgh and Maras in New York should stand up, thank Goodell for the good he has done for the league, and then fire him.

That, of course, is if Goodell doesn't have the good sense to resign first.

Not even Week 2's full stadiums, record TV ratings and overall prosperity should be enough to save Roger Goodell's job.

Not after the commissioner allowed the Ray Rice stench to pollute the entire league.

mimrem@dailyherald.com