ESPN’s Golic: Ridiculous for USA Today Columnist to Suggest Punishing Bears for Player Domestic Violence Charge

Former NFL player and now ESPN NFL analyst and co-host of ESPN2’s “Mike and Mike” responded on Tuesday to USA Today’s Nancy Armour, who recently wrote an article calling for the Chicago Bears to be punished for signing defensive end Ray McDonald to a contract after his domestic violence charges from August of last year, which were dropped, and then releasing him after his arrest of domestic violence and child endangerment.

Golic retorted that teams have every right to sign a player, and the league hands down the punishments on the players but if the league has not punished a player, then it would be “absolutely ridiculous” to punish the team that gives a player a chance.

“If the league at this point doesn’t have a leg to stand on to suspend him, why would they do anything to the team? The team has every right to sign him if they want to, which they did, and teams have every right to not sign them just like, again, the Greg Hardy situation where just about every other team wasn’t going to sign him but you only need one team and the Cowboys were that team for Hardy and the Bears were at least one of the teams for Ray McDonald. But to think the league should punish Chicago now is ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.

He continued to say, “If the league punishes Ray McDonald then Ray McDonald will be punished and sit if he needs to sit and then after he sits, he’ll be free to sign with any team. He was not punished by the league nor at this point was the league in a position to punish him, so he has every right to sign with the team. And the Bears, you can look at the way they did it any way you want, and say they gave the guy a chance and he blew it or they never should have given him a chance. OK, that’s your opinion, but for the league to step in on the Bears, no, that’s ridiculous.”

Back in March, Armour called on the NCAA to take puntitive actions “lunatic fringe” Indiana for it’s so-called religious freedom legislation.

Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent