Ray Rice: Everyone Losing

Ray Rice's catastrophic life mistake of punching his wife in the face, I'm assuming while drinking, is detonating the NFL, Rice, & Goddell. Before the actual video of this thing leaked I envisioned this blowing over, Ray Rice going back to not being a useable NFL running back, and this being forgotten about besides to make off-color remarks during Ray Rice's said lackluster games. The video shouldn't have been needed to confirm what happened. It is rather bothersome that it took the video surfacing for parties involved to do something. It's unfortunate and awful, but it's a safe bet that it won't be the worst thing to happen in the NFL this season. Spousal abuse if awful, but I'm willing to bet someone may become paralyzed, die, or cause the death of another human being. It's days like this I despise ESPN and the 24 hour garbage they throw out. Analysis, highlights, pop-culture references, YES, but the dredging up stories and endlessly clubbing them to death is not what I signed up for. I stopped watching ESPN in college because I was sick of this shit. I didn't need to hear about what Tim Tebow was wearing while being a bad back-up quarterback every day. Sportscenter used to be about news, highlights, and funny people. Now it's pretty much awful and a giant ratings grab of reaching for whatever is trending on Twitter. The stories aren't real news and it's causing flashbacks of MTV when it actually played music videos and the transformation before it became a showcase for idiocy. Trying to bring this back after a quick rant is Ray Rice deserves prison, a suspension, but he also deserves the right to go back to work and earn his living again. An "indefinite" suspension while this is "investigated" and blows over is not fair to Ray Rice and his family, where I'm certain he's the primary wage earner. I don't think it's fair to punish NFL players (professional athletes) much harsher for criminal activities than a typical person. There certainly are jobs that would probably be ruined for spousal abuse, but football player should not be one of them. Their careers are enviably shorter than our average career arc, but this means the years of primary earnings are SUPER SHORT, especially for a player who was not a first round draft pick. Rice is in those primary earning periods where his wage will never be this high again. His contrition, enrollment in anger management classes, constant apologies, various people describing him as an outstanding member of the community and "the last person" they would have guessed to hit a woman. There's no excuse or justification for what he did, but let him try to move past it and not be the only thing that defines him for the rest of his life.