David Nail finished up tour rehearsals for his I’m a Fire tour Wednesday in Nashville, but he was keeping up with the fallout from the release of the Ray Rice elevator video just like every other sports junkie. In the video, former Baltimore Ravens team member Ray Rice is seen punching his then-fiancée, Janay Palmer, inside an Atlantic City casino elevator. Another video showing him dragging her unconscious body out of the elevator surfaced earlier this year.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell claims the league never saw the video from inside the elevator until it was released earlier this week, but David think it’s “comical” to think they never had access to that footage.
“The NFL must think we’re just morons,” David says. “You know, you hear people 365 days a year talk about the almighty NFL, how powerful they are, how much money they have, and to think that they couldn’t have somehow had access to that video and known that months ago, weeks after it happened, is just ridiculous.
Ray Rice has been fired from the Ravens and suspended indefinitely by the league since the tape from inside the elevator went public, but other first-time domestic violence offenders in the NFL will only get a six-game suspension going forward. David doesn’t see the logic in the NFL’s approach in dealing with Rice.
“So, the rule doesn’t apply to him, or just because he was first and we have a video, his is worse? It doesn’t make any sense,” David explains. “If you’re having to adjust your rules as time goes along, evidently, you probably don’t know exactly what you’re doing, and you’re probably not the person that should be making the rules.”
In the future, David thinks the NFL should discipline players as soon as a domestic violence police report is filed on them, instead of waiting until something like a video becomes public.
He adds, “It’s like, if you need a video to know what went on based on the police report, but we’re gonna wait for due process or whatever it is, it’s just like, ‘Come on, man.’ It’s pretty ridiculous.”
David will be keeping up with this story as he launches his I’m a Fire tour Thursday night in Oxford, Mississippi.
Follow @ABCNewsRadio
Copyright 2014 ABC News Radio