NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has been highly scrutinized in recent years. He has received criticism from several players and fans for new rules and his handling of player punishments. However, the way Goodell has handled Ravens’ running back Ray Rice’s act of domestic violence supplants all of his other mishandlings. Goodell, the NFL, and the Baltimore Ravens organization have completely embarrassed themselves over the past two months. Goodell has managed the situation so poorly that he deserves to lose his job.

To summarize the events involving Rice, after arguing with his then-fiancé in an elevator in an Atlantic City casino this past February, he punched her and knocked her unconscious. Although the footage from the camera inside the elevator was never divulged, a video was released showing Rice dragging his fiancé out of the elevator after he knocked her out. It was later announced by the NFL that Rice would be suspended for the first two games of the 2014 season. Two games. To put that in perspective, a player gets suspended four games for a first time offense of using a banned substance. While this substance punishment may be acceptable, it is appalling that Rice only received a two game suspension for his incident when a substance abuser gets four games. After the NFL received waves of criticism for Rice’s light punishment, they made a new policy enforcing more severe penalties for incidents involving domestic violence, an inadvertent way for the NFL to say that  they made a mistake. Instead of Roger Goodell taking responsibility for his mismanagement of the original situation, he made this new policy that just happened to be put in place after this event transpired. Then on Monday, TMZ released the first video showing what actually happened inside the elevator between Rice and his fiancé Janay. It was indeed a brutal and disturbing video. The NFL and the Ravens organization quickly responded to this. Rice was released by the Ravens and suspended indefinitely by the NFL. This series of events, more than any other, highlights how miserable and dishonest the NFL really is.

One of Ray Rice’s closest friends and supporters throughout this entire situation has been his now former coach John Harbaugh. When Rice was given his original two game suspension, the Ravens head coach was standing right by his side. However, when TMZ’s video inside the elevator came out, Harbaugh said that the new video “changed things”. How did it change things? Everybody knew that Rice had knocked his future wife unconscious and saw proof in the first video of him pulling her out of the elevator. What did Harbaugh expect? How could actually seeing the graphic nature of the situation “change things” enough to cut Rice from the team? It sounds more like the Ravens are playing a part in the cover-up of the obvious mismanagement of the situation. Another interesting note about the Ravens organization is that neither Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome nor owner Steve Bisciotti have spoken at all about Rice. They have just sent their head coach with a rehearsed response to try to cover themselves. One thing is for certain, had the Ravens signed a high profile player in free agency, the owner and general manager would surely be present and speaking at his press conference.

While the Ravens organization deserves a share of the blame, the sure majority of the blame should be directly placed on the shoulders of Roger Goodell. Goodell has blatantly lied to the media and NFL fans so many times in recent months it makes your head spin, not to mention his mistake of only giving Rice a two game suspension after seeing the original video. When the second video came out, Goodell said that the video was never made available to the NFL. After saying this, a law enforcement official said that the video was sent to the NFL in April. So the NFL had the video five months before TMZ released it. Goodell then denied this report saying that he had no knowledge of the video saying he thought it was “illegal to ask the casino” for the video if it was part of a federal investigation. This was another lie. There would have been nothing illegal about giving the NFL the video. However, even if the video was not sent to the NFL, if Goodell really wanted to see the video, he could have gotten his hands on it easily. The NFL is the most powerful sports league in the country. It has FBI and law enforcement connections that have been used to investigate other players for other crimes. There is no way that the commissioner of such a league could not get this video before TMZ did. Goodell also said that since he apparently had not seen the video, he had to go by Rice’s word as to what really happened. After the seeing the second video for the “first time”, he said that what Rice told him previously did not match up to what happened in the video. Goodell said that Rice was “ambiguous” in describing the events that happened in the elevator. Of course, reports have conflicted with this claim as well as sources have told ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” program that Rice told Goodell himself that he struck her and knocked her out and that Rice was “fully truthful” in describing the incident. Once again, however, one could have easily interpreted all of this from the first video which everybody saw. The image of Rice dragging his unconscious fiancé out of an elevator and then saying it was because he punched her should make describing the events inside the elevator irelavent. Instead of sparing the fans the pain of listening to the countless lies in an attempted cover-up for the NFL, Goodell has failed to own up to his mistakes and created an even worse situation.

Goodell has permanently tainted the image of the NFL for as long as he stands as commissioner. It is obvious to everybody that Goodell purposely turned the other way on the whole situation in fear of needing to give a high-profile player such as Ray Rice a lengthy suspension. He has sent the message that selling tickets and making money is more important than doing what is right and giving the proper punishment that any player in Rice’s position deserves. Then, in light of the criticism of the original short suspension, he used the new video to justify giving Rice an indefinite suspension. Like John Harbaugh said, the new video “definitely changed things.” Save it. The NFL has painted a very bad picture to the fans. The level of the league’s revenue is being put above making sure these unfortunate situations are being fully addressed and addressed the right way. If Goodell were to one day come forth and admit his mistakes, maybe the NFL’s current image could begin a path towards recovery. That day, however, does not appear to be coming any time in the near future.