The Media’s Absurd NFL Hysteria

Such is the weight the press has put on the NFL’s punishment of Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice for punching his then-fiancee that Denis McDonough, the president’s chief of staff, had to weigh in on Meet the Press: “We all know Ray Rice being suspended indefinitely seems to be exactly the right thing.” It’s as if the people who masterminded CNN’s programming after the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 have been put in charge of all press coverage of the NFL, and they brought to the task the same sense of proportion, good taste, and dignity that characterized the network’s handling of the missing plane.

In recent weeks, you’d think that the fate of justice in America depends on how harshly the NFL punishes a few miscreants.

Domestic violence declined 63 percent from 1994 to 2012, according to the Justice Department even though the NFL had a lenient policy toward domestic abusers across this period.

Benjamin Morris of FiveThirtyEight writes that “arrest rates among NFL players are quite low compared to national averages for men in their age range” (although domestic violence accounts for a disproportionate share of the arrests for violent crimes).

It is true that Ray Rice should have gotten more than the initial two-game suspension for his shocking assault on Janay, and the NFL needs a clear, certain policy for punishing such offenses.