Ravens owner is clueless
Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti’s anger and indignation are sadly misplaced.
Bisciotti spent 45 minutes Monday criticizing an ESPN story that questioned the Ravens’ handling of Ray Rice’s arrest, growing testy at the idea that anyone would dare impugn his or his team’s integrity. Maybe if he’d have been as concerned about his star running back using his thenfiancée as a punching bag, no one would need to say a word.
But he wasn’t. As Bisciotti acknowledged when asked why the Ravens never saw that horrible tape of Ray Rice knocking his now-wife unconscious in a casino elevator, “I wasn’t concerned or interested enough to demand it. It never even crossed my mind.”
Given everything else Bisciotti said, that’s no surprise. As pointless and condescending as NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s news conference was Friday, he at least had the good sense to not blame victims or make jokes about the situation.
Bisciotti did both, with a cavalier attitude that was as inappropriate as it was appalling. The worst Saturday Night Live skits have better taste than that displayed by Bisciotti.
What Goodell and the NFL
owners have consistently failed to understand since TMZ aired that second Rice video two weeks ago is that apologies are as useless as defending themselves. Nobody wants to hear it.
What the public and NFL sponsors want is an explanation of how the league is going to prevent more of these horrible crimes in the future. And, as more incidents inevitably happen, what is a plan of action that leaves no uncertainty about how unacceptable such behavior is?
Three weeks in, we’re still waiting. Worse, we’re now shaking our heads at how Bisciotti could continue to be so clueless.
Of course he’s going to be unhappy with the ESPN article, which asserted that not only did the Ravens know what happened in that casino elevator soon after Rice was arrested, they also lobbied to get the running back into a pretrial diversion program that could help reduce his NFL suspension.
After the article was published Friday, the Ravens said it contained “numerous errors, inaccuracies, false assumptions and, perhaps, misunderstandings” and promised a detailed defense this week. The rebuttal came Monday, a 2,800-word statement followed by Bisciotti’s news conference.
It would have been nice to hear the team respond two weeks ago, when TMZ first aired the video. Better yet, the Ravens should have put this kind of effort and intensity into getting a look at the video in the first place.
“My one prevailing thought: Why didn’t we get that video? How could the league have not seen that video?” Bisciotti said when asked his reaction to seeing the tape.
Actually, his prevailing thought should have been concern and sympathy for Janay Rice.
But Bisciotti and the Ravens made it clear long ago that they don’t get domestic violence, and they don’t much care. This is the same organization that sent a domestic violence victim on stage with her abuser, then compounded the insensitivity by sending out a tweet saying, “Janay Rice deeply regrets the role that she played the night of the incident.”
Bisciotti managed to slip in an- other dig at Janay Rice on Monday, saying the reason the Ravens didn’t act earlier was “equal misdemeanors.” For good measure, he threw Ray Rice under the bus, calling the ESPN article an attempt by Rice’s people to clean up his image as he appeals his suspension.
In reality, it seems to be all women who are beneath Bisciotti’s concern.
After acknowledging the Ravens don’t have a female president, general manager or coach, Bisciotti joked about firing one of his staffers so he could replace him with a woman. And then, in the kicker of the afternoon, he expressed hesitation for a zero-tol- erance policy for domestic abuse.
“This is going to be really, really easy to threaten (a player) and get some money because the minute they threaten in-season, he gets cuts and suspended for six games,” Bisciotti said.
The message? Domestic vio-
What the public and NFL sponsors want is an explanation of how the league is going to prevent more of these horrible crimes in the future.
lence isn’t a real problem.
Bisciotti appeared Monday to defend his organization’s integrity and character. The longer he spoke, the more he called both into question.