Roger Goodell Is a Small, Awful Man

It has been a year of small men in big roles working from skyscrapers in New York.

In politics, we've got Donald Trump, a tantrum-throwing bully whose immediate response to the slightest perceived insult is a blustering threat matched with a schoolyard insult. And in sports, we've got helmet-haired vacuity Roger Goodell, the gloriously compensated commissioner of the NFL and king of self-sabotaging, awful inconsistency. 

Thoughts on the 2014 NFL Season, Few Of Them Good

So what has the 2014 NFL season taught us?

Nothing good, really.

A Pivotal Moment

Other people have said the things that need saying on the latest Ray Rice video evidence, and they've said it better than I could. That it shouldn't have taken the release of that video to spur people into action. That the NFL is looking awfully weaselly about what it knew when, as regards the material on that video. That a lot of smart people who should have known better said really dumb things about Ray Rice back in the day. And that, obviously, violence against women is wrong and should not be tolerated in the NFL.

On Distractions

We're going to take the low hanging fruit  here, but someone's got to do it.

In the short span of time since University of Missouri defensive end Michael Sam announced that he was gay, we've had the following NFL-related reports of, shall we say, socially unacceptable behavior.