Josh Brown situation continues to show the NFL doesn't have a clue
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Once again, the NFL has mishandled an eye-opening domestic violence scandal. You would think after the Ray Rice and Greg Hardy debacles, someone would have learned how to tolerate an issue such as this.
But I guess getting a bunch of "adults" to know the importance of violence against another human being is too much to ask for.
We know that Giants kicker Josh Brown abused his wife. He even admitted it himself. And the NFL has known about this way longer than they may have you believe. The league was notified of Brown's abusive nature back in January 2015 at the Pro Bowl, when he took his family to Hawaii with him for the game.
Brown's abuse on his then-wife Molly was so bad that she and her two stepsons had to change rooms. At the time, the league was only a couple months removed from the Rice situation, which was also handled terribly.
Brown was then arrested in May of 2015 but was not charged, and the league said it couldn't get any information from the King County Sheriff's Office. The sheriff's office fired back and said the NFL representative who contacted them never said he was with the league. So the NFL tried to cover its ass under a lie they thought they could get away with...again.
It must be really unfortunate that one of their employees couldn't get any information out of the police when all he/she had to do was tell them who she was working for. It'd be one thing if the sheriff's office denied the league after it was clearly revealed that it was them who tried to contact the office. But that seems to not be the case here.
This was the statement they put out after they tried to get more information:
"NFL investigators made repeated attempts — both orally and in writing — to obtain any and all evidence and relevant information in this case from the King County [Washington] Sheriff's Office. Each of those requests was denied and the Sheriff's Office declined to provide any of the requested information, which ultimately limited our ability to fully investigate this matter. We concluded our own investigation, more than a year after the initial incident, based on the facts and evidence available to us at the time and after making exhaustive attempts to obtain information in a timely fashion. It is unfortunate that we did not have the benefit or knowledge of these materials [the documents released Wednesday] at the time."
It must be really unfortunate that one of their employees couldn't get any information out of the police when all he/she had to do was tell them who she was working for. It'd be one thing if the sheriff's office denied the league after it was clearly revealed that it was them who tried to contact the office. But that seems to not be the case here.
What does all of this go to show?
The NFL doesn't care about domestic violence. They do not care about the well being of its players or their families. They can make as many commercials about stopping violence as much as they want, they can make it look like they're raising money to go toward domestic violence awareness, but it truly doesn't matter to them.
They can also take their domestic violence policy and shove it. It's meaningless.
They only care about the product on the field. Why else would Tom Brady have gotten four games for possibly deflating footballs, but have Brown initially suspended for one game before all this news came out? Greg Hardy's suspension was knocked down from 10 games to four by Roger Goodell and Hardy nearly killed a woman.
If the NFL truly cared about any of this, they would have (or should have) gone even further than they went to try and prove Brady was guilty. Deflating footballs isn't a crime in the real world. Striking a woman is.
And Brown's punishment clearly didn't add up. Only now is Brown almost guaranteed to never play again, after the most damning of information comes out. And don't even get me started on how bad the Giants look in all of this too. They're nowhere near innocent in this.
And I know a lot of what I'm saying really isn't anything new, but this just adds to the notion that the NFL doesn't care, and is totally clueless when it comes to player discipline.
If the NFL truly cared about any of this, they would have (or should have) gone even further than they went to try and prove Brady was guilty. Deflating footballs isn't a crime in the real world. Striking a woman is.
And Brown's punishment clearly didn't add up. Only now is Brown almost guaranteed to never play again, after the most damning of information comes out. And don't even get me started on how bad the Giants look in all of this too. They're nowhere near innocent in this.
And I know a lot of what I'm saying really isn't anything new, but this just adds to the notion that the NFL doesn't care, and is totally clueless when it comes to player discipline.
Even through all of this, Brown is still collecting a paycheck. Does that make any sense? None of this is fair.
It's not fair that a league that owns almost half the days of the week couldn't care less about anything other than making money. It's not fair to Brown's family, it's not fair to men and women who treat their significant others with the respect they deserve and so on.
Josh Brown is a criminal and should not be allowed to step foot onto an NFL field ever again. The sad thing is, though, is that the league knew this and once again failed to do anything about it until it was too late.