Obama on Ray Rice: NFL Was ‘Behind the Curve’

 “I am so glad that we got more awareness about domestic violence. Obviously, the situation that happened in the Rice family was unfortunate, but it did lift up awareness that this is a real problem that we’ve got to root out and men have to change their attitudes and their behavior and it has to start young. But the way it was handled also indicates that the NFL was behind the curve, as a lot of institutions have been behind the curve, in sending a clear message. You know, you don’t want to be weighing it when something like this happens. You want to have clear policies in place.

The fact that policies have now been established I think will be helpful in sending a message that there is no place for that kind of behavior in society whether it’s in sports or any place else. What’s true in the NFL is that — and this is not unique to the NFL, but that may be little more pronounced in the NFL, is that there’s been a little bit of a ‘old boys network’ in terms of how it operates and there have been some blind spots that [indecipherable] not just in professional football, but dating back in the college football, and that certain behaviors have been tolerated historically that really should not have been tolerated. So hopefully this is a wakeup call and people start thinking about this little more systematically.”