Too bad J. Edgar Hoover wasn’t available.
Mr. Hoover is the most famous FBI director of all time and, even though his reputation has taken some hits since he died in 1972, everybody would have been a lot more impressed if he had been called in to investigate the NFL instead of a more recent former director, Robert Mueller.
Mueller was called on by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to investigate, well, Roger Goodell.
It seems people are having trouble believing that a company powerful enough to call on a former Director of the FBI to investigate itself couldn’t figure out whether or not its leader had seen a video.
The video in question, of course, is the one that shows Ray Rice knocking out his then-fiance. It cost Rice his job and it could end up costing Goodell his.
Goodell claims he never saw the video and that, to his knowledge, nobody associated with the NFL had seen it.
It was right after the Associated Press reported the existence of a voicemail from an NFL office number that the call went out to Mueller. On it, a female voice expresses thanks and says, “You’re right, It’s terrible.”
Call me crazy, but this doesn’t sound like a case worthy of a G-Man who spent most of his career trying to expose al-Qaida plots.
How hard could it be to, by process of elimination, find out whose voice is on the recording and ask her who she was thanking for sending the video?
But this is the NFL and image is everything.
Yep, “We here at the NFL will leave no stone unturned to get to the bottom of this because we consider it our duty to wipe out domestic violence across the globe.”
Except in Charlotte, North Carolina where Greg Hardy was expected to start for the Carolina Panthers against the Detroit Lions on Sunday, despite being convicted of abuse at least as severe as Rice‘s.
Hardy’s former girl friend accused him of, among other things, throwing her into a bathtub, slamming a toilet seat on her hand, picking her up and slamming her on a couch full of loaded weapons, choking her and threatening to kill her.
A judge heard the testimony and found Hardy guilty and sentenced him to a 60-day suspended sentence and two years probation.
(Once again, law enforcement lets an abuser off easy.)
Hardy exercised his right to appeal to a trial by jury – a smart move that will save him millions of dollars. He has a 1-year $13 million contract and would be out several million if he had accepted the verdict and been suspended by the NFL.
The trial probably won’t happen until after the NFL season is over and he has been paid the full amount.
Will you be surprised if Greg drops his appeal after the clock runs out?
The NFL is calling Mueller’s efforts “an independent investigation” despite the fact that two team owners, Art Rooney II of the Steelers and John Mara of the Giants, both grandsons of NFL founders, will be providing oversight.
Kind of like a fox overseeing a hen house investigation.
That’s not to impugn the integrity of either Rooney or Mara but whatever the NFL gains from bringing in J. Edgar…I mean Robert Mueller, is lost by including them.
And none of it matters anyway if Greg Hardy plays another game in the NFL this season. As Rooney knows all too well because of the six-game suspension given his quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, Goodell has suspended players without waiting for formal charges to be filed much less an appeal being heard.
Mr. Mueller knows all about finding clues, but he may have met his match with the NFL.
The evidence gets stronger every day that it doesn’t have one.
Pittsburgh ex-TV sportscaster, columnist and talk show host John Steigerwald is the author of the Pittsburgh sports memoir, “Just Watch The Game.” Follow him on Twitter.