For the most part, I enjoy watching football. I don’t love it. But I like it. I watched the Minnesota Vikings season opener on Sunday. Watching Cordarrelle Patterson play for the Vikings is a genuine pleasure and the capacity for physical brilliance that accompanies the game itself is undeniable. This, for example, is fun to watch:

But we’ve come to a point where we’ve got to ask ourselves: at what cost do we watch football?

The current commissioner of the National Football League is Roger Goodell. You’ve probably heard his name in recent weeks. He is the man who suspended Baltimore Ravens star running-back Ray Rice for 2 games after Rice punched his then fiance unconscious in a hotel elevator back in February. The leniency of that punishment angered basically every decent person not employed by the NFL, and Goodell was forced to admit that he “got it wrong,” with Rice’s suspension.

Following that admission, Goodell strengthened the penalties for future perpetrators of domestic violence to 6 games, stating that “the NFL stands for important values.” Rice’s punishment, by rule, could not be changed. It was only three days later that the new policy was put to the test when Ray McDonald of the San Francisco 49ers was arrested for domestic violence. Police responding to the call found McDonald’s pregnant fiance with bruises on her arms and neck. The 49ers let him play on Sunday.

Just this week, the website TMZ released the elevator surveillance video from that February night. It shows Ray Rice swearing at, spitting on, and punching out his fiance. It is vile. After the video was made public, the Baltimore Ravens terminated Rice’s contract, and the NFL suspended Rice indefinitely.

The NFL and the Baltimore Ravens claimed they had not seen this video at any time until it was made public, which if true can only result from either supreme incompetence or willful ignorance. It existed, after all. How did TMZ get it if the NFL could not? Regardless, the NFL should let us know why the video matters. Rice’s punishment for this crime should have been the same whether or not it was caught on tape. This entire situation would have been avoided if the Ravens and the NFL had acted responsibly from the start. Reality, though, tells us that for the NFL, domestic violence that is caught on camera is worse than domestic violence that is not.

Which highlights how poorly the NFL managed this entire situation. The case has been handled with incompetence, or neglect, or both. So much so that Keith Olbermann took the prime-time airwaves of ESPN (!) and called for the entire upper-management of the NFL to resign.

The entire Ray Rice and domestic violence affair has been a cluster-fuck for the NFL. A cluster-fuck of their own creation. It results directly from the motto that Goodell has created for his league: Protect the shield. Do only that which is required to protect the NFL. If public pressure mounts, claim ignorance and make changes or settle the lawsuit as necessary. Then, damage control, some commercials with children and celebrities, and, always, more football.

Under the reign of Roger Goodell, the NFL has become the most lucrative and powerful sports league the nation has ever seen. It has happened because Goodell has, as his prime directive, protected the shield. For as long as he could manage, Goodell has protected his product by any means necessary, even when it means putting others at risk of violence. But the consequences of protecting the shield have finally been exposed in Goodell’s failure to punish Ray Rice.

This is what it means to protect your product when your product is 1,696 individual players playing 256 regular season games, 10 playoff games, and 1 Super Bowl. That product can only be offered to the public if players are on the field and not in jail, not suspended, not banned. Players are behind the shield, protected, because without them there is no NFL.

What should have been a great week for the NFL, the first week of the new season, has instead been a nightmare. Everything I’ve read since the end of opening weekend has been about Ray Rice, domestic violence and the failure of Roger Goodell. And the cumulative effect of all this, of Roger Goodell and his stupid fucking shield is that when Cordarrelle Patterson makes that final cut to the right after evading 7 other opponents, the only thing I see is this: