Tuesday, Sept. 9
OK, he's gone. Quoth the Ravens, Nevermore for Ray Rice.
I have two thoughts here. The first is a moral judgment. Roger Goodell was too easy the first time on Rice. Now he's too tough. The Ravens have dumped Rice and Goodell has slapped him with an indefinite suspension that probably means the end of Rice's NFL career.
Rice threw a punch at his wife, who was his fiancee at the time. It knocked her out. Judging by the TMZ film of the incident it seemed she wasn't totally blameless yelling and pushing him. Of course this in no ways justifies Rice throwing a punch. That was inexcusable and so was his callous treatment of the way he dragged her out of the elevator.
Rice deserves to be suspended for more than two games, but it's wrong to end the guy's career. Not everybody can show proper anger management control when being screamed at and touched. If this wasn't caught on camera there would have been no controversy about a mere two-game suspension.
Again, I'm not justifying his actions. But I will say NFL players have done worse - killing people while driving drunk immediately comes to mind - and not had their careers end because of it.
My second thought is how much of a distraction is this going to be for the Ravens, who have the Thursday game this week against the Steelers.
A lot of the Ravens were friends with Rice. Now he's gone after everyone thought he would be back after this week. The players get asked the same questions over again. The story is a headliner that won't go away. Instead of thinking about Ben Roethlisberger they at least have to have Rice in the back of their minds.
On the handicapping front, I have two baseball plays going today that I have packaged together at a regular, single price. I won my Triple Star NFL game on Sunday with the Titans and have found two Triple Star NFL plays for this Sunday. They can be purchased individually or in a discounted package along with my other packages. This can all be found here: /pregamepros/pro-bettor/bettor.aspx?id=7746#capper.
As always, no bad luck!