National Football League

Investigation has bought Goodell time he desperately needs

Published Sep. 11, 2014 9:13 a.m. ET

Alex Marvez

It’s a start.

Rather than spin excuses nobody wants to hear or finds plausible, the NFL has finally taken the first positive step toward handling the Ray Rice fiasco.

An independent investigator was appointed Wednesday night to conduct a thorough probe of how the league botched its review of Rice’s domestic violence arrest. The NFL didn’t pick a slouch, either, in former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III. His report will become public when completed.

It should be noted that this isn’t an official investigation by a law-enforcement or judicial agency. Mueller and his group will not have subpoena power to force parties to speak if they choose to remain silent.

Mueller’s selection isn’t without its own controversy. There are financial ties between his law firm and the NFL. Two team owners who have guided league commissioner Roger Goodell in the past – John Mara (New York Giants) and Art Rooney (Pittsburgh) – also were assigned to oversee the investigation.

Even so, judging by the NFL’s last independent review – the Richie Incognito/Jonathan Martin bullying scandal – we should get a darned good idea of what actually transpired if everyone does the job to which they’ve been entrusted.

The burning question is whether NFL executives – including Goodell himself – had access to the video that showed Rice punching his now-wife Janay on an Atlantic City casino elevator before the commissioner levied a flimsy two-game suspension he now painfully regrets. The Associated Press on Wednesday quoted an anonymous law enforcement official as saying he sent the footage to NFL headquarters in April and confirmed receipt. The league continues to insist that nobody inside its offices saw the video until it was posted last Monday on the TMZ.com website.

Mueller must get to the bottom of that. Other answers will follow. Why wasn’t the NFL more vigorous in its pursuit of the video? How thorough was the investigatory legwork done by the league’s embattled security staff in assembling its findings? What exactly did Rice and his wife say about what transpired between them last February during their meeting with Goodell? Does that version match what the footage graphically shows?

And is Goodell really the devil?

The last statement is made facetiously, but the venom being spewed toward Goodell from so many different directions would have you believe he’s secretly hiding horns and a red cape. Ex-players affected by Goodell’s previous disciplinary rulings and rules changes like James Harrison and Jon Vilma are skewering him on Twitter.

Columnists and reporters from a wide spectrum of media have taken their pound of flesh. Politicians are throwing stones at Goodell and the NFL from their own glass houses. The National Organization for Women has called for Goodell’s resignation and blasted Mueller’s appointment as compromising the investigation’s credibility.

Some of the criticism is valid. The misguided righteousness displayed by Goodell in what was later proven to be inflated claims regarding the New Orleans Saints in the Bountygate brouhaha is coming back to haunt him. So is Goodell’s pathetically soft disciplinary stance on previous domestic violence incidents that weren’t caught on video.

He was stunningly tone deaf to the public outcry calling for Rice to receive a stiffer punishment. Goodell was then wrong to try to defend his stance in the immediate aftermath before admitting his mistake and instituting a stronger domestic violence policy.

There are other Goodell missteps during his eight-plus years as commissioner that have cast serious doubt upon his decision-making prowess. Yet I simply can’t imagine Goodell would risk his job and eight-figure salary to say he didn’t see the video to protect Rice, who quite frankly was an insignificant cog in the overall NFL machine before the cover-up claims erupted. I can’t fathom that Goodell would have given the ex-Baltimore Ravens running back a mere two-game suspension had he watched the footage before imposing discipline.

From having spent ample time with him, I do believe Goodell is a good man at heart. But he still must bear responsibility for a mistake that will forever tarnish his NFL legacy.

As he famously told the Saints during the Bountygate fallout, “Ignorance is not an excuse.”

It’s still too early to tell what such comeuppance will entail. The NFL has prospered financially like never before under Goodell’s watch. However, team owners won’t be sentimental if the Rice scandal hurts their bottom line or threatens the league’s cushy anti-trust exemption from the government.

Depending on what the review finds, Goodell’s own retribution could be anything from censure to being stripped of almost-absolute disciplinary power to removal from office. Goodell also must decide whether he can remain credible as commissioner after all this or if resignation is the best option.

That is another benefit of establishing an outside investigation. Goodell and Co. bought some time to catch their breath, regroup and plot a better strategy going forward from both a public-relations and operations standpoint. The NFL now has a catch-all response to address prior and future bombshells.

We’re working on it.

It’s not the satisfactory answer that everyone wants. But at least it’s more than what the NFL was doing before and a giant step toward the closure that everyone – especially Ray and Janay Rice as they attempt to rebuild their lives – is seeking.