Congress can fix football's domestic violence problem.

• Author: Green, Joshua
• Position: TILTING at windmills

But it's football, not baseball, that's most in need of serious reform these days. In September, the celebrity website TMZ posted security footage of Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice punching his fiancee in the face and knocking her unconscious. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell had previously suspended Rice for a paltry two games, based on earlier footage that merely showed Rice dragging the unconscious woman from the elevator (it didn't show his left hook). After the beating tape surfaced, the Ravens cut ties with Rice. Public outrage forced Goodell to suspend him for the full season. But there's clearly an epidemic of domestic violence in the NFL that Goodell is as reluctant to address as Selig was baseball's steroids crisis. USA Today reports that fifty-seven players have been arrested for domestic violence since Goodell became commissioner. Rather than attempt to improve their behavior, the NFL has hired a new chief lobbyist, Cynthia Hogan, a former counsel to Vice President Joe Biden, to make its problem go away.

A week after Rice's suspension, Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson was indicted in Montgomery County, Texas, on a felony charge of injury to a child for beating his four-year-old son with a tree branch. According to a local CBS News report, "The beating allegedly resulted in numerous injuries to the child, including cuts and bruises to the child's back, buttocks, ankles, legs and scrotum, along with defensive wounds to the child's hands." The Vikings benched Peterson for a single game, before welcoming him back. The next day, a Houston television station reported that Peterson was accused of abusing a different...