It’s Tough to Believe the NFL is Innocent Despite Mueller Report

By Casey Drottar @cdrottar19 on January 8, 2015

As we near the weekend, many NFL fans are gearing up for the next round of the postseason. It’s clearly an exciting time for the league, as well as the respective fan bases of the remaining teams.

However, despite the hoopla surrounding the NFL playoffs, the league’s biggest black eye of the year has once again resurfaced.

By now everyone knows everything there is regarding the infamous Ray Rice scandal. The Baltimore Ravens running back found himself in hot water when he was caught on tape dragging his unconscious fiancé out of an Atlantic City casino elevator. During their “vigorous” research into the situation in order to determine Rice’s punishment, the NFL claimed there was indeed security footage from the elevator showing the entire incident. Unfortunately, they said, despite “numerous” requests, the league couldn’t get said video.

The timeline from there could only be defined as disastrous. Rice was suspended for a laughable two games. Then, TMZ released the supposedly inaccessible surveillance tape. The world watched the event in horror while the NFL scrambled to boot Rice from the league while claiming this was the first time they saw the tape.

In order to try and dodge the countrywide scrutiny after all of this took place, the league claimed they were submitting themselves to an independent investigation into whether or not they had seen the video before their slap-on-the-wrist punishment of Rice. This, they hoped, would prove once and for all that, despite everyone’s skepticism, the league never saw the tape.

Today, said investigation came to a completion. Robert Mueller, charged with running the investigation, concluded there was no evidence the league saw any elevator footage of the Rice incident. Theoretically, this conclusion would put NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in the clear after such a tumultuous year.

Theoretically, that is. I say this because, frankly, I don’t buy the idea of the NFL being free and clear here.

Now, I know it’s tough to stare at an FBI report and say it’s tough to believe. However, there are just too many red flags with the way this whole entire process has gone from Day 1.

Has the NFL done anything throughout this entire mess which made you think, “You know what, it looks like these guys have this all under control?” They interviewed a domestic abuse victim with the accused abuser sitting right next to her, a disgraceful misstep on its own. They claimed they constantly tried to acquire the elevator tape, even though the Atlantic City prosecutors said they didn’t have any electronic communication from the NFL asking for it. When re-suspending Rice after the tape eventually surfaced, the league stated the video didn’t match the running back’s description of the incident, a claim Ravens GM Ozzie Newsome quickly discredited.

The track record of the NFL’s handling of this situation alone makes a report of their innocence tough to believe. This case has been jumbled since the beginning, and there’s just more reason to think this report is inaccurate than there is to buy it as the truth.

Along with all of this, there was the infamous voicemail of an NFL employee saying in April she had received the tape, watched it and said it was horrible. The league vehemently denied this, and the Mueller report claims the league tried to obtain the voicemail, but was turned down.

This may be true, but if the attempts to acquire the voicemail were in the same light of their tries to get the original elevator footage, it makes you wonder just how much effort was put in.

And on top of this, whose voice was it that confirmed receipt and viewing of the tape? Remember, this wasn’t a “sources say there’s a voicemail” scenario.  They literally had audio of someone saying they saw the contents of the elevator tape. And this didn’t come from some random blog, nor did it float around social media. This was made public by the Associated Press.

Again, the Mueller report states they tried to get the voicemail, but the AP apparently declined. In the end, we may have to take this as the truth. It seemed we would have to go through the same scenario with the original video, at least until TMZ released it for the world to see.

Which brings us to our next red flag: if Goodell was telling the truth about their attempts to obtain the elevator tape, and this report claims he’s being truthful in saying he never saw it, why was TMZ able to get their hands on it?

I think we can all agree the size and power of the NFL outweighs that of TMZ. Nevertheless, as the news outlet famously brought up in Goodell’s mess of a press conference back in September, the NFL has an entire legal team who couldn’t get the video, but TMZ got it via a simple phone call.

I’m not saying this investigation bumbled their way through getting the AP voicemail the same way the league did in attempting to get the elevator footage. At the same time, because of the fact such a screw up already happened, it’s all you’re forced to think about when you hear the words “tried, but couldn’t obtain.”

But, hey, maybe this is just a bunch of blowing smoke about nothing. After all, this investigation was done independently by a former FBI director. Try as you may to disagree with it, this examination was done without bias.

Right?

Well, even this is a little bit of a cloudy situation. As everyone knows, Mueller has ties to the NFL. He works for a law firm which helped the league negotiate TV deals in the past. He also works for the same firm which the president of the Ravens, Dick Cass, worked at for more than 30 years.

If these facts sound familiar, it’s because they were brought up to Goodell at his press conference by CNN reporter Rachel Nichols. In bringing all of this to light, she made the point of asking the commissioner why he would want anyone with these kinds of ties to the league to be the one investigating the NFL “independently.”

Such a question needed to be asked, and it’s a big reason why many people will look at the findings of Mueller’s case and wonder if maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t as independent as it’s being made out to be. For all we know, everything in the report is true, and the league is innocent. But, when the person who conducted the investigation is immediately discovered as someone who’s done business with the man he’s inspecting, it’s all anyone is going to associate with it.

There was always going to be a cloud of doubt regarding someone who used to work with the NFL pulling off a completely unbiased investigation. And try as they might to fall back on these results, to throw their hands up and say “hey, don’t look at us, the FBI says we’re fine,” they can’t erase Mueller’s past connections with them from anyone’s minds.

We all know this situation is still far from over, despite how badly the NFL would like it to be. They thought it was over when they initially suspended Rice. They thought it was over when they banned him, thinking they had pulled off swift justice on someone they claimed had lied to them. And they ridiculously thought it was over when Goodell made an absolute fool of himself at his September press conference.

However, if things follow the same pattern they did with every past step of this scenario, we can expect more and more news and rumors to surface despite this report’s conclusion. This is the grave the NFL dug itself when it made mistake after mistake in attempts to wade through this controversy as free of harm as possible. They screwed up more than once, and now the media world will try to prove they did it again.

Therein lies the problem I come across when I try to sell myself on the idea the findings of this investigation are the gospel truth.

It seems as though the NFL has been lying about this from Day 1. They’ve been making desperate attempts to cover themselves ever since their pathetic initial two-game suspension of Rice, along with their lackadaisical investigation of the incident as a whole. Now, when a federal examination completed by someone with ties to the league claims they’re innocent, when multiple news sources and outlets have provided more and more question marks about how the league has handled this from the beginning, we’re supposed to believe it?

Right now, I’m not sold. Perhaps if some time goes by, and the TMZs and Associated Presses of the world can’t seem to dig up any holes in the report, I guess I’ll have no choice but to accept Mueller’s findings.

However, I’m keeping my eye out for the first contradictory report to make its way out to the public, which, based on how this all has been going down, should arrive in no time at all.

Casey Drottar is a Featured Columnist for www.Rantsports.com. Follow him on Twitter or “Like” him on Facebook