Rice fired for Goodell's choices, not his own

The NFL dropped the ball handling Ray Rice's two-game suspension after he was caught on tape dragging his unconscious now-wife out of an elevator in an Atlantic City casino in February.

More specifically, the league's commissioner, Rodger Goodell, fumbled the opportunity to take a hard stand against domestic violence and made his brand look silly for suspending a man for two weeks for knocking out a woman while suspending players who came up hot for recreational drugs for four games or an entire season around the same time.

Despite the public relations stunts the NFL and the Ravens attempted to pull off after the decision was made, there really was no way for fans, casual observers and the media to ignore the bottom line: Smoke some weed - take a month off; physically knock a lady out cold - see you in week three.

Goodell knew he got the suspension wrong. He wrote a letter to owners admitting as much and immediately implemented a stricter policy calling for offenders to receive a lifetime ban for a second offense.

But Goodell had no one to blame but himself. This is the world in which he created. A world where he is the judge and jury in the realm of player discipline. Shortly after taking over as the commission in the country's most popular sporting league, he established himself as the new sheriff in town, handing out punishments for player discipline issues personally.

Doing so let him take the "tough on crime" stance he desperately wanted and allowed him to send a strong message to fans and players that he was serious about cleaning up off-field issues.

That message was clear: the buck stops at the top.

When the leader of any organization makes one area a point of emphasis and takes complete control over that area, there can be no other conclusion than that individual is solely responsible for those decisions. When things go right, that person looks like a genius. But they also remove the ability to hand off the accountability to anyone else when things go wrong.

Unless that person is Rodger Goodell, who found someone else to pass the buck onto for his mistake: Ray Rice.

Make no mistakes about it, what Rice did that night in the elevator was wrong. No one should every physically assault another person, especially when that person is a professional athlete and the other person is a woman. But what he did that night isn't any more wrong today than it was the night it occurred. Or the day the Rodger Goodell handed Rice his two-game suspension. Or yesterday, before everyone in America who wanted to see the tape saw what actually happened in the elevator.

Rice didn't lose his job because of what happened that night. He lost it because his boss made a mistake of his own. Goodell doesn't have a subordinate to fire or demote or a committee to criticize for its decision.

He knew that he messed up and that the video surfacing gave him a second change to get things right. He knew he could increase Rice's punishment because he knew no one would feel sorry for a man who knocked his now-wife out cold.

He had a new set of downs to work with and used them to suspend Rice indefinitely. But not because of what happened in that elevator, but because everyone else saw what happened that night and how bad it made the NFL look. He could have suspended Rice longer up front had he wanted, but he didn't do so.

Godell got exactly what he wanted when he took over the NFL and player discipline. And Rice got fired because of it.