Kareem Hunt Apologizes For Fight In Cleveland, NFL Responds

CLEVELAND — On Friday afternoon, video footage leaked of a fight between Kareem Hunt and a young woman at The 9 Hotel in Cleveland. He also reignited a burning debate about the NFL's stance toward violence against women.

In a matter of days, Hunt went from one of the most touted running backs in the NFL to a scandal-plagued free agent in the center of a toxic maelstrom.

Hunt is a native Northeast Ohioan who played his high school ball at Willoughby South and went to college at the University of Toledo. He was drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs and became an All-Pro running back.

In February, he was in downtown Cleveland partying with friends. Then things went haywire: In the course of one evening, he appears to have unwound his entire career.

Video footage from that night, recorded from a hallway ceiling in the hotel, shows Hunt lunging for, pushing and kicking a 19-year-old woman. The woman told police she suffered scrapes on her hands and knees in the altercation.

For months, nothing came of the incident. Hunt told the Kansas City Chiefs it wasn't a major concern.

Then, on Friday, TMZ released the surveillance recording. Before the night was out, the Chiefs cut him.

“Earlier this year, we were made aware of an incident involving running back Kareem Hunt," the team said in a statement."At that time, the National Football League and law enforcement initiated investigations into the issue. As part of our internal discussions with Kareem, several members of our management team spoke directly to him. Kareem was not truthful in those discussions. The video released today confirms that fact. We are releasing Kareem immediately."

Hunt did a sit-down interview with ESPN over the weekend. He said his former team had done the right thing by cutting him. He apologized for mischaracterizing the incident, before saying sorry to his friends, family — and the woman in the video.

Still, the controversy bubbling around Hunt has reached a fever pitch.

The NFL and Damage Control

Although the fight at The 9 occurred on Feb. 10, 2018, and the NFL was aware of the incident from the jump, Hunt was allowed to play in 11 games this season. During that run, the Chiefs emerged as one of the league's the most exciting offenses since the St. Louis Rams circa 1999. The Willoughby South product was a key cog in the explosive offensive attack.

But Friday's TMZ report was devastating to the NFL.

When TMZ released footage on Friday, many pundits compared the incident to earlier NFL domestic violence cases, most notably the leaked footage involving Ravens running back Ray Rice. In video footage from the 2014 incident, also released by TMZ, Rice can be seen knocking out his wife with a punch while riding in an elevator. Images of that incident were seared into the public consciousness. It was an unmitigated public-relations disaster for the NFL.

In the intervening years, the league has struggled with being seen as tolerant of domestic violence. Just before the Hunt footage went public, the Washington Redskins added Reuben Foster to their team, despite the linebacker being charged with domestic violence on Saturday, Nov. 24.

The Hunt footage and the Foster news has again galvanized critics of the NFL. So has the interview Hunt did with ESPN, when he revealed that the NFL never interviewed him about the February incident.

"It should surprise me, but it doesn't," Kathy Redmond, founder of the National Coalition Against Violent Athletes, told ESPN. "These are non-investigations. It goes back to willful ignorance, and arrogance and hubris on the part of the NFL. It feels like everything the NFL does is on the surface, and to address PR and the brand they have to protect."

For its part, the NFL sent out a statement, claiming that it tried to obtain footage of the incident but was unable to do so. The league also claims it tried to interview the 19-year-old, but were unsuccessful in that attempt, too.

The league also said it would try, again, to interview everyone involved in the fight and would review the evidence.

The problem facing the NFL is that its tolerance for domestic violence appears to be endemic. In 2015, Robert Mueller (the same Robert Mueller, yes) was assigned to look into the NFL's handling of the Ray Rice incident.

Mueller concluded that NFL officials had not seen the elevator video before it was released to TMZ, a fact trumpeted by the league. Less widely broadcast was Mueller's other finding: that the NFL had access to other evidence in the case and "did not fully consolidate, evaluate, and therefore appreciate the import of that evidence."

Mueller also found that the NFL did not fully investigate, to the extent of its powers, what happened in that elevator with Ray Rice. Of note, NFL officials did not

• Talk to any police officers that responded to or investigated the incident
• Talk to the Atlanta County Prosecutor's Office
• Contact the hotel/casino to try and obtain surveillance footage
• Contact the Ravens, regularly, to compare notes on the investigation
• Contact Rice or his lawyer
• Return to the hotel/casino to see if additional information was available after May 20, 2014

"The Rice case illustrates that the League must not only understand how the criminal justice system addressed the player’s conduct, but also have its own clear understanding of the conduct itself," Mueller wrote in his final report.

Critics of the league will see Kareem Hunt's case as another example of the NFL neglecting its investigative duties in deference to a star player.

For Hunt, it may simply be the end of a promising career.

Read the full Mueller report from 2015 by clicking here.

Read more about ESPN's interview with Hunt, and the fallout, by clicking here.

TMZ's original report on the Hunt incident can be seen by clicking here.

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Photo by Adam Glanzman/Getty Images