Sports

Odds are the NFL won't be able to perform the same task in just 30 minutes

Let’s make one thing clear: CBS had a nearly impossible task tonight for its inaugural Thursday Night Football broadcast. To call the Ray Rice situation the elephant in the room would be a gross understatement. If the news cycle were to dictate tonight’s football coverage, they wouldn’t have even bothered with the game.

But that’s the trouble. Most people tuning in to Thursday night’s contest weren’t doing so because they wanted to hear more about Ray Rice, Roger Goodell and the unadulterated disaster that the entire situation has become. They could have turned on ESPN or CNN or any of the countless news outlets — both on television and on the Internet — covering the event with relentless fervor. Instead, most people turning on Thursday night’s broadcast were doing so because they wanted to watch a football game, because they love the sport in spite of its ever-more apparent evils and because they want a distraction from the horrors of the rest of the world. (CBS also wisely decided to drop its opener, the Jay Z–Rihanna collaboration “Run This Town,” as well as a comedy segment.)

CBS couldn’t just ignore the situation though. And for the first 30 minutes of their pregame broadcast, they didn’t. They opened the show with James Brown, who quickly kicked it over to CBS Evening News’ Scott Pelley. Pelley provided a brief summary of the Rice situation and the most recent developments (though repeatedly showing the elevator video of Rice striking his then-fiancée Janay Palmer may not have been in the best of taste). From there, the broadcast went to NFL Network reporter Judy Battista, standing outside the NFL’s New York City headquarters, who discussed the so-called “independent” investigation set to be launched to examine NFL’s investigation into the Rice-Palmer incident.

Next up was Brown’s pretaped interview with Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti, who did his best to toe the party line and proved unwilling to levy any sort of criticism at Goodell (a sample: “Why would I take an anonymous person’s word over a man I’ve known for 14 years?”). Oddly, CBS’s strongest moments came when the cameras were focused on the on-field studio crew of Brown, former Steelers head coach Bill Cowher and Deion Sanders. Moments after the Bisciotti interview ended, Cowher said bluntly, “If there’s evidence of a cover-up, with this video or anything else, I don’t see how Roger Goodell keeps his job.” Given what we’ve learned in the last 48 hours, he may as well have just said to start packing.

The capper to the Rice discussion — which also included a brief live interview with Norah O’Donnell, who had interviewed Goodell earlier in the week — was a moving monologue by Brown:

Two years ago I challenged the NFL community and all men to seriously confront the problem of domestic violence, especially coming on the heels of the murder-suicide of Kansas City Chiefs football player Jovan Belcher and his girlfriend Kasandra Perkins. Yet, here we are again dealing with the same issue of violence against women.

Now let’s be clear, this problem is bigger than football. There has been, appropriately so, intense and widespread outrage following the release of the video showing what happened inside the elevator at the casino. But wouldn’t it be productive if this collective outrage, as my colleagues have said, could be channeled to truly hear and address the long-suffering cries for help by so many women? And as they said, do something about it? Like an ongoing education of men about what healthy, respectful manhood is all about.

And it starts with how we view women. Our language is important. For instance, when a guy says, “you throw the ball like a girl” or “you’re a little sissy,” it reflects an attitude that devalues women and attitudes will eventually manifest in some fashion. Women have been at the forefront in the domestic violence awareness and prevention arena. And whether Janay Rice considers herself a victim or not, millions of women in this country are.

Consider this: According to domestic violence experts, more than three women per day lose their lives at the hands of their partners. That means that since the night Feb. 15 in Atlantic City [when the elevator incident occurred] more than 600 women have died.

So this is yet another call to men to stand up and take responsibility for their thoughts, their words, their deeds and as Deion [Sanders] says to give help or to get help, because our silence is deafening and deadly.

The words themselves may not have been particularly revelatory, but the fact that they were spoken on a national broadcast just 30 minutes prior to a crucial NFL game sends a message. At least a certain portion of the fans watching from home likely didn’t agree with everything Brown said, let alone believe those words should have been part of an NFL broadcast. That they were included may not fix the wrongs that have already been committed, but perhaps signals some sort of change in an outlook that is desperately in need of one.

But then it was time to return to football. It was inevitable that the broadcast would at some point, but the relief and gusto with which CBS did so was problematic. “Time to talk football, finally,” Brown said as they returned to air just prior to 8 p.m. The attitude for the second half-hour of the pregame show undid what good work was done in the first, as though everyone just wanted to shovel down their domestic violence vegetables before getting to their tasty meat-and-potatoes entree of football.

It’s tough to criticize CBS for opening the show with the Rice saga (it would have been odd if they hadn’t), but it also provided them with an opportunity to get it out of the way before even more viewers tuned in to watch the game. Rice’s name wasn’t mentioned in the second half of the pregame show, and the situation was only mentioned obliquely, almost always in the context of how big a distraction it would prove for the Ravens.

If you thought CBS would do anything other than address the ongoing saga with the requisite amount of sobriety before turning to the ever-more-pertinent business of football, you were kidding yourself. Sometimes all you can do is survive an impossible task before returning to business as usual — it’s what CBS did, and is undoubtedly a trick that Roger Goodell and the NFL hope they can pull off in the coming weeks and months. They may not have as easy a go of it.

Broadcaster Ted Robinson made a faux pas about Janay Rice. Defensive tackle Ray McDonald got arrested for beating up his girlfriend. Guess which one got a two-game suspension?

In the wake of the PR disaster caused by the Ray Rice scandal, NFL teams are thrashing around for ways to prove they take domestic violence seriously. They’ll throw anyone under the bus–as long as he’s not a valuable asset on the field.

San Francisco 49ers broadcaster Ted Robinson was suspended for two games this week after he suggested on KNBR radio Monday that Janay Rice, who was knocked out by then-boyfriend Ray Rice in a much-discussed elevator dispute, was “pathetic” for going on to marry Rice after he hit her.

Meanwhile, defensive lineman Ray McDonald was arrested Aug 31st for felony domestic violence, but 49ers CEO Jed York said he will continue to play until “an entire legal police investigation shows us something.” Probably has nothing to do with the fact that McDonald is a starter who made three tackles that helped the 49ers win 28-17 against Dallas on Sunday, right?

Robinson, who made “insensitive” comments but has never been publicly accused of physical violence, will sit out for two games. McDonald, who was arrested on domestic violence charges after police were called to his home and found his fiancée with “visible injuries,” is scheduled to play this Sunday.

Welcome to the wonderful world of the NFL.

Perhaps the 49ers thought they were sacrificing Robinson to appease hordes of furious women. “The comments made by radio broadcaster Ted Robinson on Monday were offensive and in no way reflect the views of the San Francisco 49ers organization,” said 49ers president Paraag Marathe in a statement announcing that the team had suspended their broadcaster. “Our organization stands strongly against domestic violence and will not tolerate comments such as these.”

Translation: “We are SHOCKED at the OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE used here! We have NO tolerance for anybody who doesn’t make us millions of dollars doing ANYTHING that makes us look bad! Plus, we totally respect women. (Pay no attention to that player behind the curtain. Or to his bruised, pregnant fiancée.)”

To be fair, Robinson probably shouldn’t have said what he said. Although no tape exists online, Robinson allegedly questioned why Janay Rice did not leave after the abusive incident, and called her “pathetic” for marrying her abuser, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. It’s not a very nice thing to say, but it’s not the worst thing that’s been said about this incident; a guest on Fox News even advised women to avoid getting abused by not hitting their husbands. It’s also important to note that while football players have union protections, broadcasters do not.

But Robinson is small potatoes compared to McDonald, and a verbal faux pas is not the same as allegations of a violent assault. Even former 49ers quarterback Steve Young said that the failure to suspend McDonald made a mockery of the team’s position on domestic violence. “Fundamentally, if the league is going to have a no-tolerance policy for domestic abuse…we’ve got to back it up,” he said on ESPN’s Monday Night Countdown. “Ray McDonald gets arrested and has physical bruising with his wife and felony domestic abuse, violence. Any company in this country, any big company, if that happens, they send you home. They might pay you, but you don’t play, you don’t come to work until we figure this out.”

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s newly-strengthened domestic violence policy stipulates a six-game suspension the first time a player is charged with domestic violence or sexual assault, and McDonald has not yet been charged legally. But Goodell’s new policy also says that an act committed against a pregnant woman could warrant a “more serious penalty.” And sixteen female Senators sent Goodell a letter Thursday demanding he take it a step further by implementing a complete zero-tolerance policy. The letter, signed by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and fifteen colleagues, said “It is long past time for the NFL to institute a real zero-tolerance policy and send a strong message that the league will not tolerate violence against women by its players, who are role models for children across America.” Zero tolerance should mean no excuses, no second chances, no tiptoeing around.

The 49ers refused to comment on the record about the difference between these two cases, but Jed York made it clear in a KNBR interview Tuesday that he has no intention of suspending McDonald until he absolutely has to. “It’s very important that we let due process take its course,” he said. “We want to make sure that everybody is afforded the right that Americans are afforded.”

So by “everybody” he means “players who help my team win” and by “right” he means, “right to play football,” which is apparently written in invisible ink on the very bottom of the Bill of Rights.

Greg Hardy was convicted of assaulting a woman. Neither the NFL or the Carolina Panthers have benched him

Ray Rice was caught on tape punching his future wife. He’s indefinitely suspended from the NFL. Greg Hardy, a Pro-Bowl defensive end for the Carolina Panthers, was arrested on May 13 for assaulting an ex-girlfriend. On the arrest warrant, a police officer made the following statement. The capital letters appeared in the document.

“I, the undersigned, find that there is probable cause to believe that on or about the date of the offense shown [May 13, 2014] and in the county named above [Mecklenburg County, North Carolina] the defendant named above [Hardy] unlawfully and willingly did assault [redacted], a female person, by GRABBING VICTIM AND THROWING TO THE FLOOR, THROWING INTO A BATHTUB, SLAMMING HER AGAINST A FUTON, AND STRANGLING HER. The defendant is a male person and was at least 18 years of age when the assault occurred.”

On the “complaint and motion for domestic violence protective order,” the accuser described the incident.

“On May 13, 2014, Greg Hardy attacked me in his apartment. Hardy picked me up and threw me into the tile tub area in his bathroom. I have bruises from head to toe, including my head, neck, back, shoulders arms, legs, elbow and feet. Hardy pulled me from the tub by my hair, screaming at me that he was going to kill me, break my arms and other threats that I completely believe. He drug me across the bathroom and out into the bedroom. Hardy choked me with both hands around my throat while I was lying on the floor. Hardy picked me up over his head and threw me onto a couch covered in assault rifles and/or shotguns. I landed on those weapons. Hardy bragged that all of those assault rifles were loaded. Landing on those weapons bruised [my] neck and back. Hardy screamed for his “administrative assistant” (Sammy Curtis) to come into the room and hold me down. Curtis came into the room, grabbed me from behind and held me down. Hardy and Curtis then took me into the living room area. I wasn’t nearly strong or fast enough to escape. I begged them to let me go & I wouldn’t tell anyone what he did. They took me out into the hall, pushed me down & went back inside his apartment. I crawled to the elevator and ran into CMPD (Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department)

In court, the accuser testified: “He looked me in my eyes and he told me he was going to kill me. I was so scared I wanted to die. When he loosened his grip slightly, I said just,`Do it. Kill me.”

On June 15, a judge found Hardy guilty of assaulting a female and communicating threats. She sentenced him to 18 months probation; a 60-day jail sentence was suspended. Hardy appealed, and since he was convicted of a misdemeanor, under North Carolina law he’s entitled to a jury trial, which is set for Nov. 17. In court, Hardy and Curtis denied that Hardy assaulted the victim, or communicated threats.

The world hasn’t seen this incident on tape. Hardy played in Carolina’s first game. He didn’t practice on Wednesday for what the team said were “personal reasons” — he met with his attorney. But Hardy returned to practice Thursday and as of right now, he is slated to play on Sunday, as the Panthers host the Detroit Lions. Pressure is building on the team to change that and the Charlotte Observer called for Hardy’s suspension in an editorial.

On Wednesday night, hours after Hardy missed practice, Panthers owner Jerry Richardson received a humanitarian honor in Charlotte: The Echo Award Against Indifference.

In March 2013, TIME took a deep look at the origins of the Pistorius case

The murder trial that transfixed the world for much of 2014 began drawing to a close on Thursday, as a South African judge found Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius “negligent” but not guilty of murdering his girlfriend. Pistorius, 27, fired four shots into a bathroom at his Pretoria home in the early hours of Feb. 14, 2013, killing model Reeva Steenkamp, but based his defense on thinking she was an intruder.

Global media relentlessly followed the case, which at times grew graphic and included a break so Pistorius’ mental health could be evaluated by experts. The judge is expected to issue a formal verdict on Friday, Sept. 12. Pistorius can still be found guilty of culpable homicide, or murder without premeditation, and may face years in prison.

Last March, TIME featured Pistorius in a cover story about this tragic series of events — not just it’s beginning between Pistorius and Steenkamp, but also in terms of the place of violence in South African society. The relationship between that culture and the famous athlete is a meaningful one, Alex Perry wrote:

If South Africa reveals its reality through crime, it articulates its dreams through sports. When in 1995—a jittery year after the end of apartheid—South Africa’s first black President, Nelson Mandela, adopted the Afrikaner game, rugby, and cheered the national team on to a World Cup win, he was judged to have held the country together. In 2010 his successors in the ANC delivered the message that Africa was the world’s newest emerging market and open for business through the faultless staging of a soccer World Cup.

Pistorius was the latest incarnation of South African hope. He was born without a fibula in either leg, and both were amputated below the knee before he reached his first birthday. Using prosthetics, Pistorius went on to play able-bodied sports at Pretoria Boys High School, one of the country’s most prestigious private schools, before a knee injury left him on the sidelines. Advised to run for his recovery, he began clocking astonishing times using carbon-fiber blades that copied the action of a cheetah. In 2012 in London, he took two Paralympic gold medals and one silver and ran in an Olympic final and semifinal.

That March 11, 2013, story is now available free of charge in TIME’s archives. Click here to read it in its entirety: Pistorius and South Africa’s Culture of Violence

The team's owner said he was too "old-fashioned' to have her on staff, the lawsuit claims

A former top New York Mets executive is alleging that she was fired because the baseball team’s co-owner was “morally opposed” to her being pregnant and unmarried, according to a new lawsuit against the troubled franchise’s front office and co-owner.

Leigh Castergine, senior vice president for ticket sales at the Mets, and the first woman to hold such a senior position in the 52 years the team has been around, contends that co-owner Jeff Wilpon ridiculed and ultimately fired her when he learned she was pregnant, the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit, filed in a district court in Brooklyn, says that Castergine had received annual six-figure bonuses and continuous promotions for lifting the team’s slumped ticket sales. But when Castergine announced she was pregnant, Wilpon “became fixated on the idea,” the lawsuit says.

“He frequently humiliated Castergine in front of others by, among other things, pretending to see if she had an engagement ring on her finger,” it says. The lawsuit also alleges that Wilpon told a meeting “of the team’s all-male senior executives” that he was “morally opposed” to Castergine’s pregnancy, and told Castergine that her boyfriend should propose if he wanted his girlfriend to get a raise.

Castergine also castigated the team for a series of poor plays — including several alleged public-relations flubs — that made her job all the harder. Some people told her, the lawsuit says, that selling tickets to the Mets was like “selling deck chairs on the Titanic.”

The Mets said in a statement that Castergine’s claims “are without merit.”

“Our organization maintains strong policies against any and all forms of discrimination,” the team said.

Ravens team leaders spoke out for the first time since Rice was released from the team

Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti continued his public contrition Wednesday when he said that team leadership had “failed” in their investigation into Ray Rice’s attack on then fiancée Janay Palmer.

“We all failed. I was kept abreast of every little thing that we were doing here,” Bisciotti told the Baltimore Sun.

Ravens leadership has claimed that the team followed league protocol when they decided to keep Rice on following a police report detailing the attack, which occurred in February. Rice was only cut from the team this week after a troubling video emerged of him punching his now wife unconscious.

Executives like Ravens president Dick Cass and general manager Ozzie Newsome have insisted that no one from the team saw that video until it was released by TMZ on Monday. NFL leadership also claims it had not viewed the video prior to Monday, though an Associated Press report on Wednesday claimed to refute that claim. Sources told AP that someone within the organization had seen the video in April.

On Wednesday, Bisciotti called the video “disgusting” and “shocking.”

“There’s a big difference between reading a report that says he knocked her unconscious or being told that someone had slapped someone and that she had hit her head. That is one version of the facts. That’s what we understood to be the case,” Cass told the Sun. “When you see the video, it just looks very different than what we understood the facts to be.”

[Baltimore Sun]

Convicted abuser set to make over $30 million from boxing match this weekend says NFL got it wrong on Ray Rice

Sadly, it took the Ray Rice video to expose another very troubling sports character to a larger audience. Over the years you might not have given much thought to Floyd Mayweather Jr., often called the “best-pound-for-pound fighter on the planet,” given that boxing is largely irrelevant.

A quick primer: He’s never lost a fight. He’s very rich. He has twice pleaded guilty to attacking women, and spent two months in jail for domestic battery in 2012. He’s been accused of battering women several other times. His ex-fiancee filed a civil suit against him last week, in which she accuses him of assaulting her.

Now Mayweather is defending the NFL’s original two-game suspension of Rice, who attacked fiancee Janay Palmer—now his wife—in February and was dropped by the Baltimore Ravens this week after video of the assault was made public. “I think there’s a lot worse things that go on in other people’s households, also,” Mayweather told a group of reporters Thursday. “It’s just not caught on video, if that’s safe to say.”

He also said he’s been falsely accused of domestic attacks.”Like I’ve said in the past, no bumps, no bruises, no nothing,” Mayweather said. “With O.J. and Nicole, you seen pictures. With Chris Brown and Rihanna, you seen pictures… You guys have yet to see any pictures of a battered woman, a woman who says she was kicked and beaten [by Mayweather]. So I just live my life and try to stay positive, and try to become a better person each and every day.”

In advance of Mayweather’s next fight, this Saturday, the Washington Post‘s Rick Maese penned an illuminating profile of the champion fighter. In discussing his criminal past, Mayweather actually mentions two civil rights icons:

“Malcolm X been to jail; Martin Luther King been to jail. The list goes on and on. You live and you learn. But I think the main thing, I think people should just learn from the mistakes that are made. And I’m not saying that when I went to jail it was a mistake. But things happen and you live and you learn.”

While Rice may never play in the NFL again, and fans are boycotting merchandise with his name on it, Mayweather isn’t doing too badly for himself. For Saturday’s fight, the boxer will likely net $30 million no matter what. Ticket sales, and pay-per-view purchases of $65 to $75, will bring him millions more.

“Whether you pay to see me win or pay to see me lose, I’m the smart one at the end of the day,” Mayweather told Maese, “because you pay me.”

Perhaps that’s a payment worth skipping.