With the NFL facing a major credibility crisis following its mishandling of the Ray Rice domestic violence situation, calls have increased for Goodell to resign or be fired. Women's rights groups, notably UltraViolet and the National Organization For Women, have been prominent in asking the nfl shirts to address its violence against women problem. Those groups have been joined by ESPN's Keith Olbermann in excoriating the NFL for its reactionary handling of the Rice case as well as its inaction related to ongoing domestic violence cases involving Greg Hardy of the Panthers andRay McDonald of the 49ers.
"It is time for Roger Goodell to resign, and for the NFL to get serious about its commitment to ending violence against women within the league," UltraViolet co-founder Nita Chaudhary said in a press release obtained by the Indianapolis Star. "In a country where a woman is battered every 9 seconds and 1 in 4 women experience domestic violence in their lifetime, we simply cannot afford to have an NFL commissioner who doesn't take this issue seriously."
After initially suspending Rice two games following his offseason domestic violence arrest, the NFL upgraded his punishment to an indefinite ban following the release on Monday of explicit video of the incident. In his first interview following the release of the video, Goodell claimed that the NFL had not seen the footage until it was made public by TMZ. That assertion was called into question on Wednesday when The Associated Press reported that a law enforcement official sent the video to an NFL executive in April, five months before it was released. In the aftermath of that bombshell report, the nfl jerseys uk announced that former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III would be conducting an investigation into the matter.
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