On Ray Rice, the NFL should not be the final arbiter of moral justice

Ray Rice will not play in the NFL for the foreseeable future. But make no mistake: It's not because he beat his wife, but because the NFL is afraid of losing money.

The league on Monday suspended Rice indefinitely after TMZ released a video showing him knocking his then-fiancée (now his wife), Janay Palmer, unconscious in an Atlantic City elevator in February. The punishment came after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's much-maligned decision to initially ban Rice a meager two games, a decision so tone-deaf Goodell later apologized and announced harsher punishments for future perpetrators of domestic abuse.

The indefinite suspension is welcome news. The video is graphic, the crime appalling. And it is undoubtedly a good development that the league will come down harder on those who commit acts of domestic violence in the future.

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However, it is impossible to see the suspension as anything other than a calculated PR move in which the punishment is based not on the crime itself, but rather on the public's reaction to the crime.

Absent the media firestorm, Rice would still have a job. San Francisco 49ers defensive tackle Ray McDonald was arrested for felony domestic abuse, but he has hardly received the same attention as Rice; he played football on Sunday. Carolina Panthers defensive end Greg Hardy was convicted on two domestic violence charges after placing his hands on a woman's throat and threatening to kill her; he also played football on Sunday.

Rice was disciplined under the NFL's personal conduct policy, which stipulates players will be reprimanded for "conduct detrimental to the integrity of and public confidence in the National Football League." In other words, the NFL suspended Rice because he made it look bad, not because the league had an objective interest in adjudicating domestic abuse nor in defending its victims. For the NFL, this was strictly a business decision; it was not a moral one. It was about assuaging critics and saving face.

That's precisely the problem with demanding that the league lead on this issue. The criminal justice system is not a multibillion-dollar entertainment behemoth. Though certainly fallible, it is tasked with objectively determining guilt and applying sentences based on proscribed guidelines. It is not an organization solely concerned with enriching a collection of already-rich men.

And this is where the real concern in the Ray Rice debacle lies. You cannot fault the league for its light punishment without also being outraged that a court let him walk free.

A grand jury indicted Rice for third-degree aggravated assault, a felony that could have landed him in jail for three to five years. Instead, Rice pleaded not guilty, and a judge placed him in a pretrial intervention (PTI) program that involves no jail time. PTI is reserved for first-time — typically nonviolent — offenders. Though Rice had no prior record, his vicious punch was hardly nonviolent. Still, the punishment was "arguably consistent" with the law, says sports lawyer Michael McCann.

That may be so. But athletes are too often given special treatment by the legal system, both because of their fame and the cash that can afford them the best attorneys around. Consider that the same judge who granted Rice PTI denied it to a Pennsylvania woman whose sole crime was accidentally carrying her gun without the proper permit.

Despite the public's vocal condemnation of Goodell and the NFL, there has been no corresponding outcry about the failure of the criminal justice system to levy a harsher punishment in the case. That, despite the fact that the legal system woefully fails victims of domestic violence.

Understandably, there is a desire to demand the NFL serve as the moral arbiter in the case because it is the only body we feel we have control over. A judge in New Jersey doesn't give two rips about your spittle-flecked tweets; a league with money and publicity on its mind does. And in the absence of legal repercussions, extrajudicial ones can feel like a reasonable alternative to fill that void.

But that elides the fact that there is a void, one that need not be there.

Do we really want a corrupt league with a horrible record of hiding unflattering evidence to be making judgment calls on what is and is not right? This is a league whose sole concern is peddling violence for money, and we expect it to impartially adjudicate potentially criminal off-field aggression?

In demanding the league lead on domestic violence, we are elevating its moral authority above that of the legal system. That's exactly how Goodell would like to be perceived, not as self-interested and sluggish, but rather as a crusading arbiter of social justice. That's hardly a position befitting someone who needed a public backlash and a threat to his bottom line to realize the gravity of Rice's actions.