NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell answers questions during a news conference in Orlando, Fla., in this March 26, 2014, file photo.My mother has always said that the best way for any young man to learn how to treat a woman is for his father to treat the son’s mother well.
That was easy for Mom. Until my dad died a few years ago, he loved, honored and respected her for every hour of every day of the 56 years they were married. He was a saint and while I won’t say I’ve always lived up to his ridiculously high standards, it has always been my goal.
Ray Rice didn’t have such a father to emulate, however. He grew up with a single mom. He grew up playing a sport built on violence. He grew up surrounded by far too many athletes in that sport who — to repeat a quote I used earlier this week from Nashville YWCA CEO Pat Shea — view women as “property, that they’re something less than human”
So when Rice got mad at his future wife on Feb. 15 at an Atlantic City casino, he did what far too many of these Neanderthal thugs do: He turned to violence, knocking his then-fiancee out with a single left-handed punch to the face, as sickening an act of indefensible aggression as one could imagine against someone he swears to love, someone whom reportedly asked him later that evening when she regained consciousness: “How could you do this to me? I’m the mother of your kid.”
Given that, if Rice is never allowed to play professional football again at the NFL level, he’ll have a hard time arguing that punishment. You just don’t hit women. Ever. At least not for any other reason than life-saving self-defense.