Quote Originally Posted by smuggler View Post
I actually "know" Rice by three degrees of separation. His story from a friend of a friend of a friend: He hit her, but never knocked her out. But she was almost blackout drunk to begin with and slapping him in the face and basically daring him to do it because she knew he couldn't. The reason for the fight? She wanted to stay and get even more wasted and waste more of his money in the casino and he noped her. When you see him dragging her like that out of the elevator, it's because she's conscious and just refusing to stand up like a pouting child. It's possible he just made up that story for his buddies, but if it's true, the 2 game suspension is pretty punitive for something that he's legally allowed to do. And yeah, they are both stupid for getting drunk in the public eye.

Comparing Rice and Gordon is apples to oranges. Gordon left college under dubious circumstances and has been disciplined by the league before. Rice has never had another incident afaik.
The argument that he hit her, but not hard enough to knock her out is too precious for words.

Rice is dumb enough to get baited into a criminal act by someone spending his money. That is a special kind of fool. The kind of fool who can be manipulated by someone who is nearly blackout drunk. If this story is even partially true, he is dumber than he first appeared to be. That he isn't smart enough to leave that trouble behind that night, indeed, that he is dumb enough to stay with it, should be reason enough to get a larger suspension.

They both should have spent the night locked up.

But I am not comparing Rice and Gordon as people. I am comparing the punishments for their actions. Rice hit someone and gets 2 games. Gordon, apparently from a contact buzz (which seems almost too ludicrous to believe but I have not seen any insistence to the contrary) gets 1 year.