Commentary

Everyone please, please stop talking

OWINGS MILLS, Md. -- Here's a message to every NFL and team official who has been involved, even tangentially, in the Ray Rice scandal: Please stop talking.

From now on, refrain from trotting out in front of cameras to say how you have erred. Spare our ears from explanations of your ineptitude that are only making the hole you have fallen into much deeper.

For everyone's sake, stop digging.

Just three days after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell played polished politician and answered reporters' questions without saying anything meaningful, it was Baltimore Ravens owner Stephen J. Bisciotti's turn with the shovel.

Here at the Ravens' training center northwest of Baltimore, he walked onto an auditorium stage and sat on a tall chair, looking very casual-Friday-dapper in a dark blazer and jeans. His mission was to address an ESPN report that claimed the Ravens tried to cover up the episode in which Rice punched his then-fiancee in an elevator at Atlantic City, N.J., in February -- an altercation that was caught on video, footage of which was made public by TMZ two weeks ago.

In front of dozens of reporters and cameras, Bisciotti said he did not ask the NFL for leniency when it came to Rice's punishment, as the report suggested. He never lobbied Goodell -- just because both play golf doesn't mean they are close friends, you know. He let the experts look into the situation and decide the punishment.

Though the report said Ravens officials learned of the details of the elevator videotape within hours of the assault, an allegation the team denied Monday, Bisciotti said he never pushed hard to see that video.

That, he said, was his "big fail."

"I wasn't concerned or interested enough to demand it, and I'm deeply sorry for that," he said.

It didn't matter that court papers -- available to the public -- said that Rice showed "extreme indifference to the value of human life" and that he caused "significant bodily harm" to Janay Palmer, who is now his wife. Or that the police had figured out pretty quickly that Rice had cold-cocked Palmer inside that elevator.

Asked why he had not punished Rice much sooner, given that the assault happened in February and an initial video showed Rice dragging his unconscious fiancee out of an elevator, Bisciotti said he was not that strong.

Cue the violin music.

What was a softy with a big heart like Bisciotti supposed to do in a society like ours -- presumably one filled with cowards? -- he said. He couldn't be "better and bigger than anyone else" to punish Rice so swiftly. So he sat back and braced for a worst-case punishment, which he feared would be an unprecedented number of games for someone he has "incredible loving feelings for."

"I'm not that honorable, I guess," he said.

But when TMZ published the footage of Rice throwing the punch, Bisciotti said he finally was upset enough to act. He said he cut Rice from the team, without the NFL's input.

"We weren't going to sit and wait for anyone else," he said.

Rice's actions were so unacceptable -- so vile -- that Bisciotti then sent him a text message, saying he would welcome him back to the team working with young players in the development department when the chaos of the episode died down. He said Monday that the job would have been for $100,000 a year, but that it was not hush money as ESPN had suggested.

"If that's considered worthy of him 'going along,' I find that absurd," Bisciotti said. "It would take him 150 years to make back the $25 million I took away from him by cutting him."

He explained that Rice, who stepped so out of line that he was banished from the team, would be "a great addition to us when it comes to trying to steer these guys, young men to grown men."

But right now, Bisciotti said, the people working for Rice -- who Bisciotti said were the main sources for the article -- are liars. They are making up stories about a Ravens cover-up to try to help Rice, who is appealing his indefinite suspension and wants to get back on the field.

This Bisciotti said throughout his painfully long 47-minute news conference, between voicing his affection for Rice and showing empathy for Rice's wife, who "is still the one that's suffering the most."

"Now she has an unemployed husband," he said.

At that point, he had dropped his shovel and was manning a backhoe.

Asked if any women had been involved in the decision-making process concerning the Rice case, he said, "Unfortunately, we don't have a female president, GM or coach," before joking that maybe if his head public relations man would leave, there would be an opening.

He also said the team would have a domestic violence policy as tough as or even tougher than the one the NFL has adopted. But he warned that strict policy might come with pitfalls, like "opportunistic" people coming forward with false accusations.

His advice to players?

"Be paranoid," he said. "Say to yourself, 'Tonight's the night someone's going to put me in a bad situation.' It's really healthy to be paranoid when you're out and about."

Or, how about, don't punch your loved ones? That would be good advice, too.

Here's advice to Bisciotti and the NFL: less talking, more doing.

Sports on 09/23/2014

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