FTW: NFL's Ray Rice Suspended, Penn State Reinstated—Football Fans Go Insane

The Baltimore Ravens terminated the contract of Ray Rice today just hours after TMZ released new footage which showed the running back cold-cock his then-fiancé (now wife) Janay Palmer in an elevator. Shortly after the Ravens announcement, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell issued Rice an indefinite suspension from the league. 

Footage also showed Rice lightly kicking and dragging an unconscious Palmer from the elevator bank. 

The incident, which occurred in an Atlantic City casino parking garage back in January, caused many to question the NFL's inconsistent enforcement of it's personal conduct policy. Rice was initially docked just two games—a punishment that paled in comparison to Josh Gordon's full-season suspension for smoking marijuana. (Reason contributor Ken Silva commented on the NFL's curious decision-making process here.) Backlash against Goodell's weak punishment eventually led the NFL to develop stricter penalties for domestic violence incidents. 

News of Rice's fate spread quickly through social media as many fans reacted with a collective "What took so long?!" and disgust with the NFL's botched handling of the situation. Former and current NFL players also expressed outrage and some demanded Rice be banned from the sport. 

Ray Rice's saga serves to illuminate the problem of violence in football. Since the last Superbowl, 30 players have been arrested or charged for a variety of crimes. (When TMZ usurps your sports league in moral authority, something has gone amiss.) The NFL's moral lapse is particularly appalling considering that the league enjoys federal tax-exempt status (yet, the NFL grossed an estimated $9 billion in profits last year) and pockets millions in giveaways from local taxpayers in the form of sweetheart stadium deals. 

And while we're on the subject of morality, the NCAA waited for news of Ray Rice's suspension to stealthily announce that it was reinstating Penn State's football postseason status and scholarships that were lost in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal after determining that the university had made "significant progress toward ensuring its athletics department functions with integrity." As Ryan Abraham of USCFootball.com points out, Penn State's sanctions for covering up child molestation and abuse were ultimately less than the penalty USC received after it was found that Reggie Bush accepted gifts from a family friend. 

Just a banner day for football all around.  

Comments

[Pro Libertate]

I have an idea about the Penn State business. How about they take college sports out of universities altogether? Fuck if I know what good they do higher education.

[Hugh Akston]

Classroom education isn't the only product/service that universities provide.

[Pro Libertate]

No, apparently they provide a vehicle for increasing the crime rate at universities, too.

I'm not even sure I like all of the research being in the same institutions. Educate or not educate.

[Winston]

How about they take college sports out of universities altogether?

So...pass a law?

[Pro Libertate]

Yes, it's a tangled web. Privatize the whole business, then the schools can do what the fuck they want to do.

[Dances-with-Trolls]

Every time I make this point regarding the NCAA I am accused of only being opposition because I must hate college sports.

[Pro Libertate]

I'll note for the record that I'm a fan of college sports, especially football and basketball. But if they had to disappear for me to get totally private education, no problem at all. The obvious demand for quasi-amateur sports is known, so there's a market for a replacement league.

[Calidissident]

I think that that demand declines substantially if that league doesn't consist of teams affiliated with universities. How many people care about minor league baseball, for example?

[C. Anacreon]

Yes, people like cheering for their alma mater to win -- it's a team they share much more with than the local professional team, with whom they only share an address.

[Beezard]

Minor and major leagues could possibly be made more interesting if they adopted the promotion/relegation model of English football (soccer). Little teams can become big teams (theoretically) through winning. And a team that consistently sucks can go down. There is interest at both ends of the league table that way. And every season there are new teams coming in or going out.

[Careless]

No way to get the owners of major league teams to agree to a deal that could see them lose their ML status, though.

[Invisible Finger]

Farm-system affiliate baseball turns off small-city baseball fans more than the mere "minorness".

[Invisible Finger]

Certainly when it comes time for FedGov to start talking about bailing out many of the states, rational people will wonder why the Michigan Football Program or the University Of California Football Programs aren't being sold to the highest bidders.

The reason Northwestern was targeted as the guinea pig for "college" player unionization was the players could not even remotely be considered state employees, and there would be shit-tons of resistance from the morons who support Notre Dame, USC, and Stanford.

[An Innocent Man]

How about they take college sports out of universities altogether?

Yep. And they should take them out of public high schools too.

[OneOut]

But... what woulld some Texas communities do with their 10 million dollar high school football complexes ?

[StHarry]

Oh hell, 10 mil is slumming it big time in Texas.

Allen's Eagle Stadium was a hair or two under 60 million, and can't be used because of bad construction!

[Invisible Finger]

Rent them out to semi-pro teenage football programs?

[StHarry]

If saner minds ran high school sports, they would understand that teenagers in competitive sports would not disappear overnight. There are already private organizations like Little League, Babe Ruth Baseball/Softball, Pop Warner Football, Police Athletic League, YM/YWCA's, Catholic Youth Organization, and several others that would pick up the slack in a heartbeat.
What it would do is reduce the cost, lose the unofficial ranking system in schools, and allow schools to concentrate on education!

[Warty]

Something something school spirit? I think that's how the argument goes.

[Heroic Mulatto]

Well, my argument is "a healthy mind in a healthy body". If you're winded from walking to class from your dorm... well, guess what, forcing your weak muscles to drag your fat ass around campus, you've used up all the ATP your brain could have used for cognitive tasks.

Of course, you don't have to play competitive sports to maintain a healthy body, but who wants to watch people work o?...nevermind.

[Response]

"How about they take college sports out of universities altogether?"

Unionizing college sport athletes should do this quite well.

[Certified Public Asskicker]

I hope Justin Forsett can do this.

[Winston]

the league enjoys federal tax-exempt status (yet, the NFL grossed an estimated $9 billion in profits last year)

So libertarians for more taxes?

[Hugh Akston]

For my part I don't think there should be such thing as tax exemptions.

[Winston]

I'm sure the ideal libertarian idea is to get rid of most taxes rather than tax breaks and exemptions.

[Hugh Akston]

Well I may fall short of the ideal idea of libertarian ideals once again, but I would prefer a simple code that imposes the same tax rate on everyone to one where the government hands out exemptions, rebates, and deductions like candy to buy votes and achieve certain social outcomes.

[Winston]

Okay, perhaps I misspoke. I didn't mean to suggest that libertarians shouldn't oppose "exemptions, rebates, and deductions" just that they would prefer to get rid of most taxes and lower them so there wouldn't be much of a demand or much power to have those things.

[JWW]

I'd just like to see equal treatment under the law. Why does the NFL get to skate by with no taxes?

Burger King gets chewed out for just trying to lower its tax bill, but NFL gets the freebie. Nope, not equal treatement.

[Pro Libertate]

Arbitrary and capricious should be the U.S. government's motto. Well, after Latining it up.

[generic Brand]

The United States of America: et ad arbitrium levis

[Pro Libertate]

Gratias tibi ego.

[CE]

Free Levi's?

[Invisible Finger]

For my part I think everything should be tax exempted.

[Mickey Rat]

The league has tax exempt status but the individual teams do not. I'm thinking the gross profits figure is gross profit of the teams as a whole.

I suspect that framing the professional football's finances that way is intentionally dishonest.

[Winston]

You Know Who Else was concerned about violence in American Football?

[Brandon]

NPR?

[Atanarjuat]

A bunch of progs? (A quick google search turned up a multitude of moral-outrage articles at Huffpo.)

[gaoxiaen]

My high school coach. He was concerned that there wasn't enough violence.

[Mencken Sense]

The American Kaiser, Teddy Roosevelt?

[Winston]

+100 Big Sticks

[Voros McCracken]

Robert Altman?

[Dances-with-Trolls]

Ray Rice inspired fantasy football team names via Reddit for your amusement.

[Pl?ya Manhattan.]

Beats by Ray.

[AlmightyJB]

Baltimore Bitches

[Winston]

Seems Football is to Reason as Corporations are to the Progs. There are too many government handouts and privileges so the solution is to give the governments more control.

[JWW]

Actually removing the NFL's special tax status and anti-trust exemption would give the government LESS control.

Picking winners by passing helpful laws is still government control.

[Winston]

The NFL does not have an anti-trust exemption, the MLB does.

Also I'm not sure that "take college sports out of universities altogether" can be interpreted to not mean "pass laws to prevent colleges from having sports teams."

And you are aware that the progs like to use corporate welfare to justify more regulation and nationalization of the economy?

[Bo Cara Esq.]

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1291

[Winston]

That only involves TV broadcasts and mergers, with the latter because of the NFL/AFL merger.

MLB specifically has been declared to be exempt from all anti-trust laws. The NFL isn't otherwise the USFL would have lost their case against them.

[Winston]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.....all_League

a U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that professional football, unlike professional baseball, was subject to antitrust laws

[Bo Cara Esq.]

Yes, they don't have a general exemption, but they have been granted specific ones like the one noted.

[Pro Libertate]

Privatize higher education.

[Pl?ya Manhattan.]

Look guys, he's technically not a wife beater. He's a fiancee beater. Totally different.

[Paul.]

And she totally came at him, too. He was defending himself. Pretend for a minute he was a cop. She's lucky to be alive.

[Atanarjuat]

Pretend for a minute he was a cop.

We never would have seen the video.

Keith Olbermann's show (which apparently still exists) was on at the gym, and he played the video. Seemed more than a bit tacky. It's one thing for it to be available on the internet for those who wish to seek it out, but unless you're Jerry Springer, showing a guy whupping a chick's ass? Try to have a classier show than that.

[dinkster]

She did make some furtive movements.

[Kaerie]

She came at him, and he backed to the other side of the car. Was he supposed to just stand there while she hit him and spit at him (according to some reports)? Honestly, I'm really not sure that most people are seeing the same video I am.

[robc]

Penn st violated fewer ncaa rules than usc. Possibly none.

[JWW]

Well then. I'll go on recode saying I'd be just fine with EVERY COLLEGE in the nation doing what USC did if it would mean that at NO COLLEGE in the nation was ever allowed to do what Penn State did.

Penn States football program should have been destroyed.

[Acosmist]

??

[Dances-with-Trolls]

Or you could just punish the guilty and leave everyone else alone, but hey, it feels good, right?

[Sevo]

robc|9.8.14 @ 6:17PM|#
"Penn st violated fewer ncaa rules than usc. Possibly none."

I'd bet there are some state laws involved, however.

[robc]

And that is for the state of Pennsylvania to prosecute. Let the NCAA deal with NCAA rules.

PSU probably violated some general "morals" clause, so I was fine with the NCAA throwing the book at them. If they want to let them off, Im fine with that too.

I just want to see UNC burn for their shit.

[Bo Cara Esq.]

What did UNC do?

[Calidissident]

USC didn't violate rules (aside from a few minor ones) themselves. The NCAA ruled that they "should have known" that Bush was getting paid by wannabe agents unaffiliated with USC.

The NCAA does/did have rules mandating general ethical behavior by programs. The head coach, the athletic director, the university president, and others, covered up child molestation by a former coach for a decade or more, to protect the football program and the university as a whole. I think that is more deserving of NCAA punishment than not knowing about one of your athletes getting paid by third parties.

[Drake]

If I remember correctly, it was technically Bush's parents who received the gifts.

What the NCAA said in this case is that USC should have known Bush's parents were scum and monitored them.

[Drake]

What rules exactly did USC violate?

What rules did Miami violate while the NCAA rules boss was the AD?

What were the respective punishments?

Fuck the NCAA.

[Sigivald]

There are 1,696 NFL players.

What's the arrest rate for the general population over a 7 month period?

Note the NFL player pool is overwhelmingly young, which should put them in a higher risk category than the whole general population - and since 74% of national arrestees were men, we'd expect the all-male NFL to have a higher-than-average rate by about 50% (if I'm doing the math right).

Of those 30 arrests, most of them seem to be dope and DUI, by the way, not the "violence problem" suggested.

The amount of violence does not appear to be especially high for the age and sex distribution of the sample size, from that data.

Would it have been hard to do the math and compare, rather than trying to start a moral panic about "violent sports"?

(Ironic for Reason, isn't it?)

If there's anything to be gleaned from that arrest data, I think it's this:

The NFL should really talk to them about not drinking and driving.

and

The NFL should talk to them a lot about how stupid it is to hang around with people who make you think you need to carry an illegal pistol around with your weed, and get them to stop doing that.

(Disclosure: Football bores the hell out of me, and I don't care about the NFL.)

[John]

And since when is an employer responsible for the off work behavior of its employees?

Reason, your hipster douche bag is showing?

[jmomls]

Reason apparently doesn't know that Josh Gordon failed about a dozen drug tests, he was not banned for a year on one failure.

So Reason is about as ignorant as every other jock-sniffing goofball in this country who knows nothing but calls into the Jim Rome Show to b*tch about it anyway.

[Calidissident]

I don't care how many tests he failed, how is that worse than what Rice did?

[Christophe]

SHUT UP AND OBEY, that's how.

[Pro Libertate]

Well, legally, usually not, but reputation-wise, a great deal. To be sure, most companies shit-can people for a whole lot less than what the NFL tolerates from its employees.

[John]

The nfl employees have much more elite and hard to find skills.

Does anyone care that Hollywood hires degenerate actors?

[Mongo]

Our company doesn't really care what bad stuff we do outside of work as long as we don't make the news.

[Pro Libertate]

Which NFL players always do.

[Bo Cara Esq.]

Employers should be free to make personnel decisions on whatever criteria they want, and the public should be able to criticize that criteria whenever they want.

[gaoxiaen]

Since Reagan was President.

[Pulseguy]

On the face of it, very high. It implies that over a ten year period that group would have 1/3 of them arrested.

I don't think the odds are 1/3 of a high school cohort will be arrested between 18 and 28 years of age.

It is possible 1/3 of young black males will be arrested? Maybe.

[Pulseguy]

I live in a town with 10,000 people. Over a year 300 people aren't arrested.

I read one week in the police blotter in the local newspaper one friday night the police were called out 2 times. Twice!! To the local skate park because kids were making too much noise. They really got after them the second time around.

Typical week around here.

[CE]

Pistols shouldn't be illegal.

[jmomls]

Tony Romo kicked every Cowboys fan in the scrotum repeatedly yesterday, yet I don't see or hear of him getting suspended.

[MikeP]

As long as the NFL owns the video of this, TMZ won't get it.

[Apatheist ?_??]

Well Cowgirls fans deserve it so that's different.

[The Late P Brooks]

Footage also showed Rice lightly kicking [her]

Just making sure she wasn't playing possum. You don't want to lean in there and get whacked on the ear with something. That hurts.

[The Late P Brooks]

How about they take college professional sports out of universities altogether?

hth

[Drake]

Who is "they"? How did "they" get powerful enough to dictate how a private institution spends money on legal activities?

[Winston]

The worst parts of anti-trust laws in sports is that they gave us the Kansas City Royals and New Orleans Saints.

[Ken Shultz]

"Ray Rice's saga serves to illuminate the problem of violence in football. Since the last Superbowl, 30 players have been arrested or charged for a variety of crimes."

Those two sentences don't necessarily belong together. Or are you saying that 30 players have been arrested for violent crimes over the past year?

Regardless, I think you'll find that the crime rate (violent or otherwise) among NFL players is very similar to that of whatever demographic and socioeconomic community they grew up in.

If a kid grows up in a poor, crime ridden area, somewhere, it's unreasonable to expect him to somehow escape statistical gravity just because the NFL stuffs his pockets full of money.

If you'd given me that much money when I was 22? There's no telling how dangerous I would have been.

[Atanarjuat]

If you'd given me that much money when I was 22? There's no telling how dangerous I would have been.

This. I was charged with three felonies when I was 23. I was a cocky piece of shit, and I was pretty much a loser who wasn't good with women, the opposite of some sports star. Life taught me many lessons in humility, which I'm grateful for.

It's kind of like that uproar of Justin Bieber's behavior. I just thought, "some young guy egged a house and drove fast? That's it? What teenage guy hasn't done that?"

[Juice]

I egged no houses.

[Ken Shultz]

No TP either?

Didn't they have Halloween where you grew up?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S7GiPN1oAw

Your parents should have been stricter or somethin'. Maybe they should have sent you to fundie school.

Didn't you use foul language?

Anything?

[Bo Cara Esq.]

In other sports news, I got around to reading the email of the Atlanta Hawks employee. That was supposed to be racist? If anything it might have had some racist stereotypes about Southern whites, but it certainly did not seem racist towards blacks.

[robc]

If anything it might have had some racist stereotypes about Southern whites

That isnt racist?

Whites can be racist against whites.

[Bo Cara Esq.]

I don't think that's why he was the center of a firestorm though.

[flye]

Agreed. I thought it was inartfully written at times, and probably said some things that shouldn't have been committed to paper, but surely was no different in content from any marketing demographics meeting at, say, HBO. Except that they use the term "urban" to cover their tracks.

[Bo Cara Esq.]

He goes out of his way to say and even argue that what he thinks are the assumptions of many Southern whites about black fans are incorrect and a shame.

[CE]

He was wrong about Southern whites by the way.

[Calidissident]

I think the part that is racist is where he advocates racial discrimination against black people when hiring cheerleaders, and selecting contest participants, and putting people on the Kiss Cam. In a majority black city, and if crowds are 70% black, it's not the least bit surprising that black people will be the majority in those areas. I see nothing wrong with wanting to diversify the music, concerts, ticket giveaways, etc. or noting that black people have less disposable income on average. He does seem to blame race for the late-arriving crowd and lack of noise, which seems pretty unsubstantiated.

Overall, I agree that he doesn't seem to be a hateful racist the way Sterling is, and I would say that most of the email isn't problematic. But the few parts I talked about basically advocate discrimination in hiring and selection, and there are a couple other parts where I think he blame race for problems based on spurious reasoning. I don't think it's unfair for people to take issue with those parts. Marketing to target certain demographics for expansion isn't wrong, but you have to avoid pissing off your existing customer base at the same time.

[Juice]

Switch the races and it all sounds very progressive.

[CE]

He didn't want to discriminate against anyone when hiring cheerleaders. He wanted the cheerleading squad to look like Georgia.

[Meerkatx]

Ferry was reading a report by a scout from another team. He doesn't deserve to lose his job over that, does he?

[CE]

It was just a discussion of marketing toward a particular demographic. Even Kareem said so.

[Ken Shultz]

"Backlash against Goodell's weak punishment eventually led the NFL to develop stricter penalties for domestic violence incidents.

News of Rice's fate spread quickly through social media as many fans reacted with a collective "What took so long?!" and disgust with the NFL's botched handling of the situation."

What's amazing about this story is how quickly public opinion is changing on marijuana. It isn't just that Ray Rice's punishment was so lenient--it's that the NFL's punishment for smoking majijuana was so harsh.

It shouldn't be surprising that the NFL was caught flatfooted on this. I think the public's attitude has changed dramatically--since last season!

Now that legal recreational marijuana is here thanks to Washington state and, especially, Colorado, people are quickly getting how silly the NFL's penalties for smoking it really are.

Of course, the penalties for smoking it under state and federal law aren't silly at all. ...because...because...look, a squirrel!

[Mickey Rat]

The results so far have been to make the domestic violence policy a bit draconian and nothing at all to the drug policy.

[Ken Shultz]

Actually, they've been talking about overhauling the NFL's marijuana policy since May, and there's been a lot of talk about changing it.

http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/e.....s-outdated

Here's an Op Ed from the New York Times from a couple of hours ago:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09.....olicy.html

The times they are a changin'.

[Ken Shultz]

Oh, and I hope the point gets across that I was looking at the NFL as a bellwether for which way the wind's blowing on legalization.

The NFL is a hell of a lot more responsive to public opinion than Congress or your state legislature, that's for sure. And I think public opinion is changing very quickly.

Like I said, I don't think you'd have gotten this comparison to Josh Gordon a couple of years ago. ...maybe not even last season. You get to a critical mass of people, people become unashamed to talk about it, and then, all of a sudden, it's the NFL that's ashamed of the harshness of their policy--not that they aren't being harsh enough.

We hit that critical mass sometime just after Colorado went recreational.

[Warty]

FUCK ART MODELL

[Mickey Rat]

"News of Rice's fate spread quickly through social media as many fans reacted with a collective "What took so long?!" and disgust with the NFL's botched handling of the situation."

Yet the victim married Rice, Atlantic City did not prosecute the case because the victim involved refused to cooperate and pled for leniency on Rice's behalf with Goodell. yeah, the big problem here is the NFL's handling of the situation.

I am a bit befuddled why it is incumbent on the NFL to punish criminal behavior that does not occur on its grounds.

[Bo Cara Esq.]

I bring this up when people criticize colleges for how they address alleged sexual assaults, they are hardly novel in this. Lot's of private organizations deal themselves with what would be crimes apart from justice system.

[Mickey Rat]

I understand that they can, I am not understanding the apparent notion that they must. And must do it to some ill-defined consensus of the public.

[Bo Cara Esq.]

I agree.

[Calidissident]

It's not uncommon for abuse victims to refuse to press charges and stay with and/or defend their abuser. That doesn't make it ok.

The NFL's doing this to protect its public image. Gaining a reputation of being a league that lets its players run wild committing violence with no repercussions isn't good business. In a business as high-profile as the NFL, everything a player does that becomes known to the public affects the league as a whole. I don't see the mystery in why the NFL takes measures in cases like this, nor do I see the problem with it.

[Mickey Rat]

I don't understand the public's attitude towards this, not why the NFL has done what it has done. The fact remains that Rice should have been punished by a criminal court. The primary reason he was not is because his victim did not want him punished, yet the outrage is directed at his employers.

[Calidissident]

Simply put, people don't like people who commit domestic violence (and it getting caught on tape makes it worse since there's no arguing what happened and it makes people more emotional about it) and many would prefer not to watch them on the football field, at least until after they serve a punishment. I'm not saying I would have stopped watching the NFL if Rice wasn't suspended, but I understand why people feel that way.

[Mickey Rat]

As I see it, the NFL (or any other employer)is ill configured for dispensing justice. The NFL has been responding to the whims of a lynch mob. The fact that the object of the mob's ire is guilty does not make it right.

[Ted S.]

It gives them a more high-profile place to show their righteous indignation.

[Ken Shultz]

"I am a bit befuddled why it is incumbent on the NFL to punish criminal behavior that does not occur on its grounds."

They're protecting their brand--from public opinion.

That's alright. Private corporations will do that when a CEO or somebody says something that hurts the brand.

Corporations are more responsive to the concerns and desires of their customers than elected politicians are, that's for absolute, positive sure. When the wind starts blowing in the other direction (which it already has), they'll change.

[Mickey Rat]

Again, I understand why the NFL took this action today. I do not understand why the public thinks that it is the NFL's job to dispense the appropriate amount of justice on a criminal matter. A criminal matter the authorities decided they could not pursue.

[Ken Shultz]

Americans think their sports teams belong to them. It's part of their identity, like being Catholic and Irish and Boston, of course you're a Red Sox, Celtics, B's, and/or Pats fan! It's as much a part of some people's identity as anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7g3RuoreRc

Subconsciously, I'm even prone to that kind of thinking. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of Sonny Jurgensen and Billy Kilmer. Later they were of Wes Unseld and Big "E". I grew up rooting for Dennis Maruk and the Hogs.

That's my freakin' childhood, man. And I do get a say in how they run everything--including who the coach is!

People also get nutty when there's kids involved. When I was a kid, I saw NHL players jump over the glass to go after people in the stands--and look at the strapping young buck I became anyway! Other people don't feel like that, though. If a kid anywhere looks up to you, they think you're supposed to be a role model.

And if we're paying for the tickets, making the ratings, and buying the merch, then why shouldn't they get a say in how these things are done? That's one of the reasons why entrepreneurs are better than politicians--entrepreneurs care more about their customers than politicians care about voters. And this is evidence of that.

The customer is always right! ...and as soon as we're wrong, we'll find something else to watch. Maybe wrestling, or Lacrosse, or Rugby, or the USFL, or the XFL, or the Terps,...

[JoeSchmoe]

Unless you're the type of dumbfuck who adheres to and espouses incoherent dogma like "MEN AND WOMEN SHOULD BE TREATED EQUALLY BUT A MAN SHOULD NEVER HIT A WOMAN," I don't see how you can come to any conclusion other than that this video clearly shows Ray Rice acting in self defense. The spin in this article is especially perplexing given the amount of thought that ordinarily goes into a Reason piece. This is a bad article, Roger Goodell is a bad person, and you all should feel bad.

[JoeSchmoe]

You all seem pretty sure of yourselves. I guess the video was kind of blurry. Did I miss something? I am truly befuddled.

[AlmightyJB]

He knocked her the fuck out. He's a punk ass bitch.

[JoeSchmoe]

Yeaaaaah... um... that's not really an argument...

Unless your point is that self defense is never justified if it results in the aggressor being not unconscious, in which case I respectfully disagree.

[JoeSchmoe]

Every libertarian I've ever met disagrees as well...

[CE]

Men and women should be treated equally, but a man should never hit a woman.

[BlackSox]

It is important to remember, when comparing Ray Rice and Josh Gordon, that Gordon was a repeat offender whose punishment was meted out by a collectively bargained process. Regardless of where you stand on marijuana use, both the league and the players' union agreed to the schedule of escalating penalties.

And before we indict the entire collegiate athletic culture, I live near Virginia Tech. It wasn't an athlete who murdered 32 people on April 16th, it was an English major. Should we ban English? Of course not. Let's back off making stupid blanket statements, please. We are, after all, in favor of Reason.

[userve32]

Man that really makes me mad., I say off with this losers head at once!

http://www.Crypt-Tools.tk

[Christophe]

September 8th 2014: Shortly after becoming self-aware, Anonbot decides to wipe out humanity.

[Almanian!]

And the Lions win. How long before they cold cock their fans in a Ray-Rice-like move, breaking their hearts like they always do?

Too bad it wasn't Peyton Manning who took the beating. Cause that would've been more fun.

Well - we can pretend for now that they have a chance. 15 games to go, plus potential playoffs, for them to let us down one more time! Woo hoo!

[Ken Shultz]

They're in a tough division.

Cardinals/Chargers is even worse. Whoever wins thinks they're doing alright--and I think they both stink.

[CE]

And who decided to put Cardinals/Chargers on Monday Night Football, part 2? After a full weekend of college and pro games, our reward is to watch THAT?

[Pulseguy]

I've seen lots of violence over my lifetime. She was out for a long, long time. She'll be slurring her words for quite awhile after a hit like that. Real life, you get knocked out that hard, and you're out for that long, you don't 100% recover for many months. And, maybe there will always be some damage left over.

[Pulseguy]

She hasn't left him yet. But....now he's lost his multi-million dollar a year job. The next step down is not a $500,000 a year job. It is unemployment, or working as a sales clerk somewhere for $12 an hour. Two years from now he's flat broke. She'll leave him then.

[Phil N]

Alexis you get the award for making the best points in the fewest words. Mark Twain -- who once quipped, "The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it" -- would be proud. Well done!