Rozner: Don't NFL fans deserve answers from Goodell?
While the world waits for Roger Goodell to stop hiding behind the shield, the focus for the moment remains on the Ray Rice video.
TMZ says the NFL never asked for it. The NFL claims it had no access to it.
We'll give you time to stop laughing and get back to that bit of comedy, but in the meantime there's a question that kept me up Monday night and long into Tuesday morning.
Why did the video matter so much?
Ray Rice admitted his crime. He told the NFL. He informed the Ravens.
The video of him dragging his unconscious wife-to-be out of that Atlantic City elevator was everywhere. He was indicted on aggravated assault charges by a grand jury with all the evidence that he beat a woman half his size.
So suspend reality for a moment and believe the NFL and the Ravens never saw the video and couldn't get the video. What then, exactly, did the Ravens and the NFL think occurred in that elevator after Rice told them what occurred in that elevator?
How do you suppose his wife wound up on the ground? Did she slip and hit his fist? Did she run so fast into his fist that it knocked her out? Did she swing from the chandelier and fall onto his fist?
What part about the video provided information that wasn't apparent from the body being dragged into a hotel lobby after Rice told them what he did before he dragged his future wife from the elevator and into the hotel lobby?
Baltimore coach John Harbaugh was one of many who said that seeing the video altered his opinion of Rice and the entire situation.
“It's something we saw for the first time (Monday),” Harbaugh said. “It changed things, of course. It made things a little bit different.”
Only if you were pretending that Rice didn't actually punch his girlfriend and knock her out, and that appears to be what Goodell and Harbaugh have been doing for the last six months.
In early August at the first news conference of training camp, Harbaugh was all smiles when asked about the increased media presence anticipating Rice's news conference.
The most visible man in the organization smirked and said, “We appreciate attention.”
Tone deaf doesn't do justice to the inability of the NFL to understand that beating up women is a serious and escalating problem in the NFL and in America.
But as the face of the franchise, Harbaugh has featured that Harbaugh grin throughout this entire ordeal — until Monday, when the video forced the coach to at least feign genuine concern.
“When someone that you care about does wrong and is faced with consequences of doing wrong, and rightfully so, it is tough,” Harbaugh said Monday. “It is hurtful. My pain is for both of them as a couple, going forward. My hope is that they can make it work.”
Harbaugh has struggled from the start with pretending he cares about anything but football, and it was apparent as he bumbled his way through it Monday that he cares about football and little else.
As for the league, it continued to defend itself for not already having the video, a league spokesman stating Monday that “no one in our office has seen it until today.”
No one in the office? How about everyone else who works for the NFL?
Goodell told CBS on Tuesday that the NFL asked for the video, but did he ask Rice's attorney for it? And why was it so easy for TMZ to get it, but all the former FBI investigators and former cops on the NFL payroll couldn't get it?
We're supposed to believe nobody from the NFL knew how to get it, with all their billions in revenue and all their resources, while TMZ did?
Since the video surfaced Monday morning, the NFL has issued several statements and Goodell spoke with CBS on Tuesday night, admitting that he didn't need to see the video to know what happened, after saying the video was so graphic that he changed Rice's suspension from two games to forever.
While you compute that contradiction, understand that this is not going away any time soon, and it's time for the Teflon Don to step in front of the cameras and answer questions.
He needs to stand there and take his medicine until reporters at a real news conference are satisfied they're getting legitimate answers to difficult questions.
We are close to a tipping point on this, and Goodell's answers better be honest and shed some light on how the league could have been so uncaring and incompetent.
If not, Goodell may go the way of Ray Rice.
He might be out of a job.
• Hear Barry Rozner on WSCR 670-AM and follow him @BarryRozner on Twitter.