As the league does its best to find out the truth about Gareon Conley, who’s been accused of rape, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell chimed in with his thoughts on the matter.
In an appearance at the NFL Play 60 event in Philadelphia on Thursday morning, Goodell had the following to say in response to a question about what the NFL will do in response to this allegation.
“We obviously will look into that,” Goodell said, per NFL.com. “The teams are looking into that. It’s a serious allegation and must be treated seriously. Those are things we obviously want our players to avoid. We have programs in place but let’s see how the facts come out.”
Conley has issued a strong statement of denial, and he says he has video evidence to corroborate his story, along with multiple witnesses (more on all that here).
That said, Goodell’s point about this being a situation the league wants its players to avoid is a salient one.
As we saw with Caleb Brantley, who is being accused of punching a woman outside a nightclub, knocking her unconscious (he strongly denies the accusation and has refused to settle with the woman), Conley was out in the wee hours of the morning at a night club before the alleged incident at a Cleveland area hotel occurred.
Both young men were out extremely late at night in situations where alcohol might have been a factor in what occurred. Though they might be completely innocent of what they are accused of having done, they put themselves in situations where bad stuff can — and unfortunately all too often does — happen.
As a result, both young men could lose millions in their first NFL contracts, even if they did nothing wrong.