--- title: Ray Rice Jersey Swap Lets NFL Fans Off Easy description: League tries to give supporters unearned absolution by trading in disgraced player's paraphernalia canonical: https://time.com/3313134/ray-rice-jersey/ author: Jack Dickey article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-09-09T21:09:28.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:45:30.875Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Why League Can't Make Ray Rice Disappear og:description: Jersey swap lets fans off easy og:url: https://time.com/3313134/ray-rice-jersey/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte39353308bff7590/6986a295cd68486156096618/ray-rice-jersey-swap.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3931 og:image:height: 2211 og:image:alt: Bartender Abby Hopper, left, of Baltimore, collects a Ray Rice Baltimore Ravens football jersey from Erin McGonigle, right, of Arbutus, Md., at Hersh's Pizza and Drinks, a Baltimore restaurant that offered a free personal pizza in exchange for Rice jerse og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why League Can't Make Ray Rice Disappear twitter:description: Jersey swap lets fans off easy twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte39353308bff7590/6986a295cd68486156096618/ray-rice-jersey-swap.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Ray Rice Jersey Swap Lets Fans Off Easy > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: Ray Rice Apology [Watch (HLS stream): Ray Rice Apology](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Fu9CAHZT.m3u8) (1:58)  _Published 2014-07-31. Ray Rice Apology_  by [Jack Dickey](https://time.com/author/jack-dickey/)  ## Jack Dickey Sep 9, 2014 9:09 PM UTC  Bartender Abby Hopper, left, of Baltimore, collects a Ray Rice Baltimore Ravens football jersey from Erin McGonigle, right, of Arbutus, Md., at Hersh's Pizza and Drinks, a Baltimore restaurant that offered a free personal pizza in exchange for Rice jerseys on Sept. 8, 2014. Bartender Abby Hopper, left, of Baltimore, collects a Ray Rice Baltimore Ravens football jersey from Erin McGonigle, right, of Arbutus, Md., at Hersh's Pizza and Drinks, a Baltimore restaurant that offered a free personal pizza in exchange for Rice jerseys on Sept. 8, 2014. Steve Ruark—AP  by [Jack Dickey](https://time.com/author/jack-dickey/)  ## Jack Dickey Sep 9, 2014 9:09 PM UTC And now comes the rending of garments. The Baltimore Ravens announced Tuesday that fans will soon be able to exchange their Ray Rice jerseys at team stores for the jerseys of players who have not yet been captured on TMZ-published surveillance video socking their domestic partners and dragging them, unconscious, from an elevator. In this program the Ravens follow the New England Patriots, who in July 2013 offered fans the opportunity to exchange their Aaron Hernandez jerseys for certain new ones. (Hernandez had been charged with first-degree murder.) Soon more than jerseys will vanish: The rosters in _Madden NFL 15_, according to Electronic Arts, the popular video game’s publisher, will as of Friday lack Rice too. The goal, broadly, is to prompt not only Rice’s disappearance from the NFL (the league tossed a lily-gilding indefinite ban his way after the Ravens cut him) and its stadiums but also its branded memorabilia, which is damn near as big a deal to the owners as the games themselves. Presumably the NFL fears a certain type of collector who might wear a Rice jersey as a confused statement on something or other. This is why the NFL’s list of language banned from the back of customized jerseys includes “CARRUTH” among hundreds of curse words and scatological terms. (Rae Carruth, a former Carolina Panthers wide receiver, was convicted of a conspiracy to murder his pregnant girlfriend in 2001.) When the Patriots offered their Hernandez swap last year, more than 2,500 fans came in, primarily to grab Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski, and Vince Wilfork jerseys. What was the calculus? The fans must have figured that they could not any longer wear HERNANDEZ 81 jerseys in good faith. (As a native son of Connecticut, I can assure you: Many of my neighbors might find themselves naked if they had to turn in all their Pats-themed items.) They voluntarily forewent immediate eBay riches or down-the-road cocktail-party kitsch; one might call this good taste. But the act of turning in a jersey, and being done with it—migrating support effortlessly from Rice to Joe Flacco or Terrell Suggs or Torrey Smith—also reads as unearned absolution. The support Rice received from fans, after all, helped to put him in a position of power. And the unyielding support (both financial and spiritual) that the people of Baltimore have for the Ravens, and that the people of most any metropolis have for their teams, is what leads the NFL to believe it [can conduct itself however it likes](http://deadspin.com/espners-are-pissed-at-the-nfl-over-its-ray-rice-video-c-1632424069), apparently lying to even its most loyal reporters. [We’re in a strange place culturally.](http://time.com/3304306/professional-sports-social-change/) The sport that has become our national pastime also happens to present pressing moral dilemmas both acute (the Rice violence) and chronic (the game’s violence). It’s a lot to wrangle with. I know a handful of smart sports fans who give their fall and winter Saturdays and Sundays away to something besides football. And I know a few more people like me, who think the sport entirely barbaric but still love it. Watching at home on Sunday like tens of millions of other Americans, I couldn’t help but whoop and take to my feet every time the Jets’ defense had the Raiders in a third-and-long. We football fans are all in this swamp together, wondering what it is we’re supposed to do. What we cannot do is outsource our questions to the league and the teams. Because their answer—unlike the names on the backs of our Ravens and Patriots jerseys—will never change. ## Transcript I was raised by a single parent, and that was my mother. You know to sit here today and you know replay the things that my mom raised me to be. You know I let her down, I let my wife down, I let my daughter down. I let my wife's parents down, I let the whole Baltimore community down. And I got my teammates there to support me, I let my teammates down. You know I let so many people down because of thirty seconds of my life that, you know, I know I can't take back. There's many nights that me and my wife sleep together and we still have to deal with this. And her pain is my pain, my pain is her pain but one thing that. I wanted to do today was, you know, apologize to my wife. Who, I've known since high school. I've known her since a kid. You know, I met her in high school, and, she's the same girl now that she is. Great mother, and, she's a great wife. And she supports me, you know, throughout and. You know, when the time is right, when the time is right. And I say that because, you gotta fix yourself before you can go out there and help others. And when the time's right me and my wife, we wanna go out there and, and help people, anybody. You know, violence of any kind, especially man on woman. It's just not right. It's not right. It shouldn't be tolerated It's not right for society, no matter what. That's something I'll stand by and I have to pay for that. But me and my wife when the time is right, we will go out there and help as many people as we can to go out there. And speak out against domestic violence, because there's something that shouldn't be, it's just, it's just totally inexcusable. And I'm here today to tell you that, you know, I made the biggest mistake of my life. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3313134/ray-rice-jersey/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3313134/ray-rice-jersey/"},"headline":"Ray Rice Jersey Swap Lets Fans Off Easy","datePublished":"2014-09-09T21:09:28.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:45:30.875Z","description":"League tries to give supporters unearned absolution by trading in disgraced player's paraphernalia","url":"https://time.com/3313134/ray-rice-jersey/","keywords":["Sports topic","Football","NFL","ray rice"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte39353308bff7590/6986a295cd68486156096618/ray-rice-jersey-swap.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jack Dickey","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/jack-dickey/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte39353308bff7590/6986a295cd68486156096618/ray-rice-jersey-swap.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Bartender Abby Hopper, left, of Baltimore, collects a Ray Rice Baltimore Ravens football jersey from Erin McGonigle, right, of Arbutus, Md., at Hersh's Pizza and Drinks, a Baltimore restaurant that offered a free personal pizza in exchange for Rice jerse","caption":"Bartender Abby Hopper, left, of Baltimore, collects a Ray Rice Baltimore Ravens football jersey from Erin McGonigle, right, of Arbutus, Md., at Hersh's Pizza and Drinks, a Baltimore restaurant that offered a free personal pizza in exchange for Rice jerse","creditText":"Steve Ruark—AP","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3313134/ray-rice-jersey/","name":"Ray Rice Jersey Swap Lets Fans Off Easy"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Ray Rice Apology","description":"Ray Rice Apology","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/Fu9CAHZT/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-07-31T18:54:15.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Fu9CAHZT.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3313134/ray-rice-jersey/","duration":"PT1M58S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3313134/ray-rice-jersey/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```