Show Me The Money

The Ray Rice story is still big news this morning, with much commentary, moralizing and pontificating from both inside and outside the sports world; Ray Rice is currently at the top of the Top Stories list on Google News and the Trends list on Twitter.

You could spend the rest of the day clicking through all the stories out there. For now, my favorite is the Baltimore Sun's editorial titled titled "Reckless and Callous." Here's the heart of the matter:

For all Mr. Harbaugh’s talk of character and family, the Ravens are a business. They supported Mr. Rice when they thought he still added value to the team. Now, no amount of on-field talent can make up for the revulsion Ravens fans will feel when they remember the sight of his left fist smashing into Ms. Palmer’s face. If team officials really hadn’t seen the video until Monday, their unwavering support for Mr. Rice was reckless, in that they had to assume that it would have come out eventually, and callous, in that they knew all the pertinent facts about what happened in the elevator without having seen it. Evidently the Ravens can stomach having a player who would knock a woman down and then treat her with all the care he would give to a sack of flour — just so long as the public doesn’t see it.

So once again, it's the video that did it, or as "Frannie" put it in a tweet I re-tweeted last night: 
Ray Rice was not cut from the Ravens and suspended from the NFL indefinitely bc they saw that video. He was cut bc you saw that video.
So will Ray Rice ever play pro football again? The NFL suspended him "indefinitely" which isn't the same thing as "from now until the day you die." Although most observers appear to believe his football career is over, I'm intrigued by Jeffrey Toobin's comments on CNN last night. Toobin insists that Rice will eventually be reinstated, after some kind of therapy and a "teary press conference," because in a league where winning is the only thing and billions of dollars are at stake, Rice's value as a player will eventually trump his shortcomings as a man and a human being.  

Media feeding frenzies have a pretty short shelf life and something else will no doubt bubble to the surface and knock Ray Rice out of the spotlight soon. (And of course, these days he and his wife can't just "go on Oprah" to tell their side of the story, although I'd bet bookers from GMA, Today and Dr. Phil are on overdrive trying to get the "get" with Mr. and Mrs. Rice.) For now, at least, I'm curious to see how things turn out for Rice, and more specifically for his wife. I'm going to try to follow the story, unless and until something juicier comes along.