Paging Rollo Tomasi

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive

Even if you have been paying minor attention, over the past weeks, and months, to the know-famous NFL-Ray Rice Domestic Abuse Scandal - let's get in the vernacular - NFL-RayRicegate is what we can start calling this - Rollo Tomasi is now entering, center stage.

TMZ released a video yesterday, showing for all, the 1-2-combo punches of the now unemployed NFL running back, his then-girlfriend-now-wife, dropping like a sack of potatoes.

It's eeire and heartsicking.

And, when it happened, Rice's then-girlfriend-now-wife made statements about "mutual combat' and was at Rice's side, apparently during the interview with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, and, at a press conference.

I don't know if even the most ignorant and terrible police department would interview a wife beater, with the victim in the room

Rice received, to the outrage of the world, a paltry 2-game suspension, and, actually, no discipline from the NFL team that employed him, the Baltimore Ravens (who were formerly the Cleveland Brown, who then-owner Art Modell moved them in the dead of night to Baltimore).

So, up until yesterday, the NFL, and Roger Goodell, and the Baltimore Ravens all thought they could get away with it.

But TMZ's video, which, according to hotel people where the abuse occured, the NFL never asked for it, has exposed the NFL, Roger Goodell, and the Baltimore Ravens as a gaggle of Roland Tomasi's.

They're not getting away with it.

And, now that we have an NFL-RayRicegate bubbling up, a classic Nixonian "who knew what and when", the weight of their deception is only buidling.

Charlie Pierce has a good take;

" ...The National Football League was exposed as either mendacious or shockingly unempathetic. Commissioner Roger Goodell was exposed as either a liar, or as someone who should not be allowed to count his own money. (Olbermann's right. He's got to go, but he won't, because most of the NFL owners think he's handled the whole thing splendidly.) The Ravens organization was exposed as a rat's nest of soulless, profit-driven drones. (And I hope nobody in the head offices of either the NFL or the Ravens misled the local prosecutors, who now also look like idiots on the national stage, and very likely are looking for someone to blame.) And, finally, Ray Rice is out of a job ..."

Keith Olbermann has called for a bevy of heads


Eric Wilber of Boston.Com has said "Goodell Needs to Go"


Chadd Fin of 'The Boston Globe' offers - No One Looks as Horrible as Ray Rice, but NFL, Ravens Sure Did Try.

When you look at this scandal, and, perhaps, Major League Baseball's plunging it's head in the sand over the steriod abuse, it's blatent how the greed over the billions these sports produce takes priority over the "right thing" to do.

Once in professional sports, there was a man, the first commissioner of Major League Baseball, Federal Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who was faced with a scandal, and, didn't hesitate what to do, didn't concern himself with the greed of the game, and took definitive, and swift action - For gambling, and changing outcomes of games, he banned eight Chicago White Sox players (many say Shoeless Joe Jackson didn't deserve it), for life, the infamous Chicago Black Sox Scandal.


Instead, now, we have a gaggle of Rollo Tomasi's.