Roger Goodell must be relieved. On Friday, critics of the NFL’s handling of domestic violence cases found a new target: U.S. women’s soccer. “When Ray Rice, Greg Hardy and Adrian Peterson were arrested, there were loud calls for those players to be suspended,” the New York Times’ Juliet Macur wrote. Meanwhile, Hope Solo—one of women’s soccer’s biggest stars—is still playing goalkeeper for the U.S. women’s national team, even as she awaits trial on two misdemeanor counts of domestic violence. (Solo is accused of instigating a fight in which she allegedly punched, tackled, and scratched her nephew and attacked her half-sister when she attempted to intervene; the nephew allegedly responded by hitting Solo in the head with a broom and sticking a BB gun in her face). “The response to Solo’s case?” Macur writes. “The sound of crickets—except on game days, when it changes to applause. And that’s inexcusable.” The Washington Post’s Cindy Boren takes the comparison and runs: “While U.S. Soccer doesn’t have the same high profile as the NFL, how do the cases differ? Aren’t women’s soccer players just as much role models as male football players? … Why is the notion of awaiting due process so inconsistently applied?”
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