NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is cute when he gets all sanctimonious. And he's never been cuter than after the league owners winter meetings this week.
Faced with two recent high-profile incidents in which NFL players were accused of mistreating women, Goodell did what he does best _ stick his head in an alternate reality.
Reuben Foster was a 49ers linebacker until he was arrested on domestic violence charges Nov. 24 at the team hotel in Tampa. It was the second time in less than a year that he was accused of abusing his girlfriend. And you thought mulligans were just for golfers.
The 49ers cut Foster hours after the Tampa incident. Goodell sat on his hands as Washington claimed Foster almost immediately.
Foster's indiscretion occurred shortly before a 10-month-old video came to light, showing Kansas City Chiefs running back Kareem Hunt pushing and kicking a woman in a Cleveland hotel in February. The Chiefs cut Hunt. The NFL's report, according to ESPN, did not include interviews with Hunt or the woman he was seen brutalizing in the video. Hunt was placed on the commissioner exempt list, essentially suspension with pay (peeled grapes and bon-bons optional).
Questions abound. Why not interview Hunt? Why not hunt down every scrap of video you can get your hands on? Why the leniency granted Foster and Hunt?
"We obtained material that we have access to," Goodell said. "But we're not going to do it by corrupting people or trying to find a way to bribe them into giving us the video. That's not what we do."
There are other, less-coercive manners of obtaining evidence such as video. A few weeks ago, former Raiders CEO Amy Trask, appearing on "The NFL Today" on CBS, outlined how such incidents might be investigated from a team perspective.
"When you learn about a situation you mobilize immediately," she said "You gather appropriate staff, which includes your security personnel. You reach out to your contacts in local law enforcement, and if there is a hotel involved, at that hotel.
"If the incident occurs elsewhere, but there's a team located there, I would pick up the phone and call my counterpart or the owner of that team and ask that he facilitate an introduction for our staff with local law enforcement and hotel personnel in that city."
She went on to say that investigators should assume there is video of the event.
"I would search like Nancy Drew to find that video recording," Trask said. "Historically, teams and the league have not been willing to do what outlets like TMZ have been willing to do to get video."
Why? Because the less evidence collected, the easier it is to file an incident under No Big Thing. It's undoubtedly a substantial file. USA Today has compiled a database of NFL player arrests. To date, it has logged 922 incidents dating back to Jan. 24, 2000 _ granted, not all related to violence. Still, that's one per week.
Goodell's finest hour this week was when he said, presumably with a straight face, "I think what we're doing as a league is extraordinary. We take this seriously."
