Let’s start with getting one thing straight – domestic violence is a crime and should be treated that way. It is abhorrent and those who perpetrate such acts are to be scorned and dealt with to the full extent of the law. That said let’s take a look at the Ray Rice situation and see if there is a way to figure out how this blew up over the last few days.

While the video that was released by TMZ is shocking and showed the level of violence involved it did not provide any new information. That’s right, we have known for months that Rice hit his then fiancé and dragged her from the elevator. Further, my understanding is that the police and prosecutor had this video from the beginning. Should Rice have received a different level of punishment than what he received? No question – let’s face it if I, or pretty much anybody else committed a similar crime, we would most assuredly have been introduced to a period of time in jail – but then we can’t win football games. So, I would suggest that any outrage about Rice’s level of penalty should first, and primarily, be laid at the feet of the prosecution.

Much has been said about the NFL’s, and particularly Roger Goodell’s, treatment of this incident. To put this in perspective I would like to draw a parallel. There are 32 teams in the NFL and I suspect that each has at least 100 employees, probably more than that but for our discussion I will use that number. That’s 3,200 people. Let’s say that you are the CEO of an organization with 3,200 employees and one of those employees, not a direct report but one that reports to a least one or two managers below your level, commits a crime similar to Rice’s. What are the odds that our imaginary CEO would have an intimate knowledge of and have dealt with the penalty in that case? Maybe not zero but close. He might have known it happened but would depend on the staff to properly administer the situation. But let’s further complicate the situation. Rice is not employed by the NFL but by the Baltimore Ravens and as such the NFL is even one more level removed from the situation. Given that, it would suggest that the second level of outrage, if there is any, might be directed to the Ravens. I am not a cheerleader for the NFL only trying to put this incident in some perspective.

No doubt both the Ravens and the NFL could have reacted more forcefully when this first surfaced and they have acknowledged that, adjusted their penalties accordingly and instituted much more stringent punishments for any future incidents. So what is the wildcard in this fiasco? My vote goes to the media – I suspect one would need a CRAY supercomputer to calculate the number of times the second video has been shown. Further the amount of time the talking heads have spent pontificating on this would leave one to believe that this has started World War III. Remember, the second video provided no new information. Further, how many other acts of domestic violence have been perpetrated in this same timeframe that received absolutely no mention by anyone? Thousands maybe more – who knows? Maybe, just maybe, more time spent on those nameless, faceless incidents would do more in reducing the levels of domestic violence than the hoopla surrounding the Rice affair.