Poor Choice: Why'd Goodell Target Brady When He Should Have Gone After Hardy?
BOSTON (CBS) -- This offseason, Roger Goodell's reputation was in shambles. He had been under siege for the mismanagement of the Ray Rice incident and the general public largely believed that he was simply an empty suit that took his walking orders from the owners.
As luck would have it there would be two opportunities to rehabilitate his image on a national scale.
The Deflated Balls controversy from the AFC Championship game and Greg Hardy's brutal beating of his ex-girlfriend. One was at worst, innocuous gamesmanship. The other was the kind of barbarism against a woman that makes you cringe.
Goodell chose poorly.
We all know what happened as a result. We were bombarded with DeflateGate "news" on an almost daily basis. We were assailed with information that was routinely factually challenged from both sides as they postured to win public opinion on the most insignificant of rules violations. Millions were spent on an "independent" investigation that was more about petty league score settling among owners than actual justice, and the result was another embarrassing loss in court for the league and its embattled Commissioner.
If only Goodell had decided to treat an equipment violation as such and saved the crusade for Greg Hardy's reprehensible behavior.
There would have been no need to hire Ted Wells. No science for the mercenaries in lab coats at Exponent to bend to the league's wishes. Nor would there have been the need to conduct scores of pointless interviews designed to prove that a diabolical plot to deflate footballs existed.
Jeff Pash wouldn't need a writer's credit on Hardy's report. He'd just need to go to the copier and Xerox what the Police, court and NFL senior vice president Lisa Friel determined during their investigation; that Hardy chucked his ex-girlfriend, Nicole Holder, around his apartment, choked her and tossed her on a futon full of assault rifles. Instead of demanding Brady's phone to learn the secrets of "Dorito Dink," Goodell could have gone after Hardy's phone to see what sort of psychological terror, in addition to the physical abuse, he perpetrated against Holder. And the urgent call from a neighbor to 911, who was more than "generally aware" that Hardy was battering Holder, would be exponentially less questionable than the recollection of referee Walt Anderson.
The courts had done all the hard work for Goodell. They had already convicted Hardy of the charges in a bench trial, but when Hardy appealed for a trial by jury and Holder suddenly refused to cooperate, the verdict was tossed. And here is where Goodell should have brought his full power as Commissioner to bear.
This is the case that Troy Vincent should have presided over as Goodell's disciplinary Trojan Horse to issue the initial 10 game punishment (or more). This would have allowed Goodell to hear the eventual appeal, instead of arbitrator Harold Henderson. Instead of reducing the punishment, as Henderson did to 4 games, Goodell could have taken the same stand he did against Brady and not reduce the punishment on an infinitely more important issue than ball inflation.
Nationally, Roger Goodell would have been lauded for doing the right thing and taking a stand against domestic violence . He also would have flipped the script on NFL Player's Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith. During Brady's appeal Smith buried Goodell and the NFL's credibility and integrity by citing various examples of owners engaging in questionable behavior. By not reducing Hardy's penalty at all, Goodell would not only be daring Smith to appeal on Hardy's behalf, but also smacking Smith completely off the moral high ground because even compared with the wrongs of Jim Irsay, Hardy's behavior is indefensible. A Hardy appeal to Federal Court would leave a very messy stain on Smith and the NFLPA for some time.
And if the NFLPA did appeal, there would be less grounds to overturn it. It would just be whether Goodell was within his rights to increase the length of domestic violence related suspensions without prior notice. That's it. No issues with hiding scriptwriter Jeff Pash from cross examination. No issues with denying Hardy access to evidence. It was all public record.
During the Brady appeal, NFLPA Attorney Jeff Kessler embarrassed the NFL with a witty and spirited defense of Tom Brady. And Judge Richard Berman's issues with the various questionable aspects of the Wells report put NFL counsel Daniel Nash on the back foot from gavel to gavel. There is no way Kessler would have been able to pull his legal stand-up routine in front of Judge Berman with Hardy's violent misdeeds as his only source of material and there would be no questionable investigative concerns to distract from a ruling.
Now Goodell and the NFL still could have lost. But they would have lost trying to take a stand on an issue of social significance. It would have been perceived as a noble effort to do the right thing for Holder and for women in general. Instead, Goodell took a loss in Federal court as the foil for owners bitter over Brady's and the Patriots success and was portrayed as an incompetent fool in the media once again.
Greg Hardy's presence on the field Sunday against Brady and the Patriots will be a final reminder of Roger Goodell's regrettable offseason judgment: That Goodell went further to punish a player who let air out of a football than a player who tried to deprive air from a woman.
Mike In Woburn, formerly known as Mike From Attleboro, is a regular caller to the Felger & Massarotti Show. You can find him on Twitter @MikeFromATown.
