Goodell Corrects Error: NFL enacts harsh punishments for domestic abusers

You KNOW I had to jump in here…

http://espn.go.com/espnw/news-commentary/article/11425377/nfl-implements-domestic-violence-penalties

Basically, its’ an auto 6 games on the first incident and A LIFETIME BAN on the second incident. What’s even more impressive and more noteworthy is that there are escalators for that first incident, such as:

an employee (YES, this means ALL NFL employees) was involved in a prior incident before joining the NFL; violence involving a weapon; choking, repeated striking, or when the act is committed against a pregnant woman; or in the presence of a child.

– Prior acts. So, this WILL affect this upcoming college draft. Think Jameis Winston, who’s had his domestic violence at FSU covered up.
– Act involved a weapon. That’s pretty straight forward.
– Choking. LOTS of guys have choked women and had nothing come of it. With the potential of an 8 game suspension and teams knowing that, these guys become seriously devalued.
– Repeated striking. It’s one thing to say “there’s a line. You just never hit a woman.” It’s another when the abuse beats the crap out of her. I would imagine that a “beating” would escalate substantially, perhaps to a year, even, on the first offense. Let’s just say that you DO NOT want to be the guy to test Goodell on this.
– Pregnant woman. Few things jump up as wrong as the idea of striking a pregnant woman. I imagine the escalators will be as severe for this as for repeated striking, if not more so.
– Presence of child(ren). This brings up violence not only on the person being struck but the collateral damage of the children forced to see that as well. Again, I imagine this will be dealt with most harshly.

I am very glad that Roger Goodell has changed courses on this. I have been about the harshest critic you could find on Goodell on just about everything, but this is the right thing to do going forward.

As for players and NFL employees, this will forever after be known as the Ray Rice rule and he’ll be known as a domestic abuser and someone who “got away with it”. If a player violates the rule and is suspended or banned, they will be “Ray Riced” or “Riced”. That is his legacy now.

I really hope it changes behavior, because… humans should love one another and dammit, this shouldn’t even be a story.

On a completely separate note: I DO know for certain that it DRAMATICALLY changed the 2015 NFL draft. All those red flag guys teams might want to take a flyer on? Well, you don’t take draft flyers on guys facing possible 6-8+ game suspensions because they’ve got domestic violence stuff in their past. All of THOSE guys just dropped.