The NFL Is a Pillar of Moral Decay

How is it possible for an organization to be so wrong on so many levels, all at the same time and still be successful?

Once upon a time, the NFL had a consensus-building, button-down commissioner named Pete Rozelle. His most incredible achievement may have been to convince a group of 1%ers -- team owners -- that a socialist concept called revenue sharing would benefit them all.

Frankly, that helped teams like the really small-market Green Bay Packers and small-market Buffalo Bills compete on an equal level with teams from mega-markets like New York, Chicago, Dallas, and -- at the time -- Los Angeles. The concept proved so successful that the NFL gets along just fine without a direct presence in the nation's second-largest metropolitan area.

This week, the football world should be celebrating this concept, as the Buffalo-based Terry Pegula -- owner of the NHL Sabres -- ensured the Bills would still be viable in that city by putting up $1.1billion to purchase them.

Instead, football and non-football observers alike are consumed in the latest in a long line of issues that show just how messed up the NFL really is.

For starters, just ask Janay Rice. Did she bargain for any of this?

That's right. She can't put it behind her.

The hell of it is, she thought she did. But it seems nobody noticed that Mr & Mrs Ray Rice seemed to be smoothing into a fairly normal relationship until bottom-feeder TMZ decided to take the haughty NFL down a peg or two. And, ironically, justifiably so.

The NFL has enormous corporate influence. It's renowned for such deep-drill research on draft prospects that players' first-grade teachers have been interviewed. There is no way it doesn't get all the details of any incident. So yes, be thankful that the league considered you a top-draw brand name, Ray Lewis!

Ray Rice can dodge bullets better than his wife can dodge punches. Domestic disputes can be tough to prosecute when the wife doesn't want to come forward, so he got off with a slap on the wrist from the state prosecutors. Why? Well ...

• Whichever hotel employee had that elevator video wasn't forthcoming with it until TMZ opened its wallet, and
• Rice happened to be a local celebrity, starring for Rutgers before becoming a millionaire with the Ravens.

But still, what did the State of New Jersey -- and the NFL -- think happened in that elevator for Janay Rice to be dragged from it in an unconscious state? That she tripped? Had a seizure? What?

And with Ray Rice so nonchalant about dragging her out and leaving her on the floor until a female passer-by offered assistance, wasn't that action enough that he'd slugged her into that state?

The state can't re-charge him. That's double jeopardy. But as we all know now, the NFL can keep piling on if it so desires. And it so desired. Not because it was the right thing to do, and who knows if it was? The NFL did it because Rice was seen to be detrimental to whatever image the NFL thinks it has.

Rightly or wrongly, once the state had come to terms with Ray Rice, he had apparently made peace with Janay Rice, they were doing what they could to put the past behind them, and he was earning a handsome living on the field, just like fellow domestic-abusers like Greg Hardy and Ray McDonald.

As far back at the Book of Job, the moral beacon has been this:

Do you do what you do because it's perceived to be the right thing to do, or do you do what you do because it is right ?

NFL, you are so guilty of moral indifference.