The team’s head of security was given a detailed account of the video showing the violent incident between the running back and his then fiancée, reports say.

Former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice.

Nick Wass, AP

Just hours after former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice knocked out his then-fiancée in an Atlantic City, N.J., elevator, the team's head of security reportedly was given a detailed account of the incident by a police officer.

Darren Sanders, the Ravens' director of security, was given a "play-by-play" by an Atlantic City police officer of video recorded inside the Revel hotel and casino elevator where the February incident unfolded, unnamed sources told ESPN and CNN on Friday.

After learning of the attack, Sanders quickly shared what he was told with Ravens executives in Baltimore, ESPN said, though it was unclear who exactly was immediately made aware of the contents of the video.

"The Ravens also consulted frequently with Rice's Philadelphia defense attorney, Michael J. Diamondstein, who in early April had obtained a copy of the inside-elevator video and told Ravens President Dick Cass: 'It's f—-ing horrible,'" the report said.

ESPN said they interviewed more than 20 sources, including "team officials, current and former league officials, NFL Players Association representatives and associates, advisers and friends of Rice," for the report.

The reports contradict statements made by the team early on suggesting they were unaware of what exactly took place in the elevator between Rice and his then-fiancée, Janay Palmer.

In a statement to BuzzFeed News Friday night, the Ravens said the ESPN report was inaccurate.

"The ESPN.com "Outside the Lines" article contains numerous errors, inaccuracies, false assumptions and, perhaps, misunderstandings," the statement read. "The Ravens will address all of these next week in Baltimore after our trip to Cleveland for Sunday's game against the Browns."

ESPN later responded to the Ravens statement, saying, "We stand by our reporting."

The news came just hours after National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell held a news conference Friday afternoon to address the recent abuse scandals within the organization. Goodell apologized for the way the NFL handled abuse cases involving Rice and Adrian Peterson, among others.

"We have seen all too much of the NFL doing wrong. That starts with me," Goodell said. "I got it wrong in the handling of the Ray Rice matter."

"The same mistakes can never be repeated," Goodell said.

Ray Rice is seen dragging his fiancee, Janay Palmer, out of an elevator moments after knocking her out in Atlantic City, N.J. in February 2014.

TMZ, via AP

LINK: Hundreds Line Up To Exchange Their Ray Rice Jerseys At Ravens Stadium

View Entire List ›

The NFL Players Association filed an appeal of the indefinite suspension on behalf of Ray Rice on Sept. 16.

Ray Rice will argue that the NFL extended his suspension "on the basis of an edited [TMZ] videotape," reported ESPN's Adam Schefter.

AP Photo / Mel Evans

According to ESPN, "Legal sources told Schefter that the TMZ tape of Rice hitting his then-fiancee was a cleaned-up, whittled down and condensed version of the events that took place in the Atlantic City casino elevator."

Mobile users can watch the video here.

Via tmz.com

Robert Mueller, the man appointed by the NFL to oversee the investigation of how the league handled the case, is expected to have access to the full elevator security video, sources also told ESPN.

Mueller was the director of the FBI from 2001 to 2013. He has also led the United States Department of Justice, working on cases involving such things as white-collar crime, financial fraud, terrorism, drugs, and corruption.

AP Photo / Matt York

View Entire List ›

Also proving the importance of seatbelts in the process.

A drag racer is lucky to be alive after spectacularly crashing his 55 Chevy at the Pikes Peak International Raceway in Colorado over the weekend.

youtube.com

Right from the get go it was obvious both cars were out of control.

youtube.com / Via Nick Wray @ BuzzFeed

Which led to one of the cars flipping four times.

youtube.com / Via Nick Wray @ BuzzFeed

Once the car came to a halt, the driver's legs were hanging out the front window, much to the dismay of the crowd.

youtube.com / Via Nick Wray @ BuzzFeed

View Entire List ›

However, FIFA insists that Executive Committee member Theo Zwanziger is just expressing his own personal opinion.

FIFA Executive Committee member Theo Zwanziger said during an interview Monday that he believes the 2022 World Cup will not take place in Qatar, owing to the searing temperatures in the Middle Eastern nation.

Since the tiny Gulf state was awarded the tournament in 2010, it has struggled to convince critics that that the cooling technologies it had promised to deliver would adequately reduce temperatures in stadiums to a safe level.

It has also been forced to fend off multiple accusations of corruption, and faced questions surrounding the conditions provided for migrant workers.

Speaking in an interview with Germany's Sport Bild on Monday, former German Football Federation Chief Zwanziger — a high-profile member of FIFA's all-powerful Executive Committee — said, "I personally think that in the end the 2022 World Cup will not take place in Qatar."

"Medics say that they cannot accept responsibility with a World Cup taking place under these conditions."

"They may be able to cool the stadiums but a World Cup does not take place only there," Zwanziger said.

He added: "Fans from around the world will be coming and traveling in this heat and the first life-threatening case will trigger an investigation by a state prosecutor. That is not something that FIFA Ex Co members want to answer for."

When contacted by Reuters, FIFA spokesperson Delia Fischer said, "He is expressing a personal opinion and he explicitly says so."

FIFA has faced questions surrounding the scorching temperatures in Qatar before. FIFA President Sepp Blatter has said awarding the rich Gulf state the tournament was probably a "mistake," and suggested it may be moved to be played in the European winter.

This, however, would disrupt many of the domestic seasons for the top soccer leagues around the world.

Getty Images/Sean Gallup

View Entire List ›

How FutHead.com harnessed a massive hidden audience to create a millions-strong community.

FutHead

In 2010, Dan Paulson and Chris Conover were working as web developers in Orlando when they picked up a copy of EA Sport's FIFA 11. Neither had really played the series before, or had any special interest in soccer, but they quickly found themselves hooked.

Just three years later, they run a major website dedicated to the game, FutHead, which attracts millions of visitors each month and which made them over a million dollars when they sold it last year to Curse, an online game portal.

The success of FutHead is obviously a testament to FIFA's status as the world's most beloved sports videogame series. But more specifically, it's part of the story of the explosive success of FIFA's five-year-old Ultimate Team mode (or FUT), a wildly popular, yet largely unknown to most form of online fantasy fùtbol in which players wheel and deal their way to squads comprised of better and better (real) players.

Over 20 million people have signed up for Ultimate Team since its inception, and the release tomorrow of FIFA 15 will only see that number grow. Many of those people pay real money to acquire FIFA Points, which can then be exchanged for player packs, much like a pack of baseball or Magic cards. Earlier this year, EA announced that their Ultimate Team services, which they introduced with FIFA, generated $380 million dollars in revenue for the fiscal year.

The key to the appeal of FUT, like any collectibles-based community, is its weekly updates, in which EA release special improved versions of players who are "on form" in real life, which go on sale in packs. Put simply, if Barcelona star Neymar scores four goals in a week, for example, EA might release an updated—and rare—version of him with improved statistics.

Because of its constant iterations, daunting number of players from all leagues around the world, and obsessive focus on value, Ultimate Team rewards careful attention and comparison, something that is impossible without a complete catalog of players. In 2011, when Paulson and Conover started playing Ultimate Team, that didn't exist. Paulson, who grew up playing World of Warcraft and was accustomed to that game's comprehensive online databases (like Wowhead and UltimateDB), was shocked FUT didn't have an equivalent.

"Any game as big as FIFA should have a canonical source for information," Paulson said.

EA Sports

So he and Conover decided to make it. It took the two college friends a month of work in their spare time to build the first FutHead database, but as soon as the site went live, they knew they had a hit on their hands.

"The first day after we were accepted to Google Ads we made 500 bucks. We said to each other, 'this could be something.'"

FutHead had stumbled upon a hidden—and massive—audience. So quick were FIFA fans to flock to the site that the major issues faced by Paulson and Conover in the early days of the site were entirely technical.

"It was painful when the site took off," Paulson said. "We were restarting and adding servers every day. There was a lot of on the job training."

But the site continued to grow—and grow. When Curse acquired FutHead in June 2013, the site was averaging around 90 million pageviews a month. This past May, FutHead attracted 420 million pageviews, more than quadrupling their popularity in a year.

Given Futhead's massive audience, it's natural to wonder why EA didn't build it first, and why they haven't tried to build a competitor. Paulson attributes it to a lack of technical expertise: "They want something like this but they don't have the chops to do it. They can barely keep their blog running."

For their part, Paulson and Conover maintain a strategic relationship to stay on EA's good side; they won't run ads for coin selling operations, users who use bots to farm Ultimate Team's in game currency and sell it on third party networks. In exchange, FutHead get data on new player cards from EA in advance of their release.

If there's a threat to FutHead, in fact, it probably doesn't come from EA, which gains publicity for its game, but from FIFA, to whom FutHead don't pay licensing fees and from whose players FutHead profits. Paulson says he and Conover's decision to sell to Curse was largely motivated by concerns about liability.

For the time being though—and with the release of tomorrow's game—the site is popular, profitable (with a paid staff of just the two friends), and proof of the huge and growing community of FIFA fanatics throughout the world, one–like the other emergent game communities—with a potentially enormous future economic footprint

Said Paulson, "I wouldn't be a soccer fan if it wasn't for the game."

View Entire List ›

Because that’s what really counts, amirite?

Getty Images / Michael Dodge / Via Brad Esposito / BuzzFeed

Joel Selwood

~high fiving a million angels~

Getty Images / Quinn Rooney

Scott Pendlebury, Collingwood Magpies

Oh hey BICEP.

Getty Images / Michael Dodge

Luke Parker, Sydney Swans

Scoooore.

Getty Images / Quinn Rooney

View Entire List ›

“We’re talking ‘bout practice. Not a game… PRACTICE.”

Instagram user Steve McPherson helped his daughter recite Allen Iverson's "practice" rant, and it's brilliant.

Steve McPherson / Via instagram.com

Nailed it.

Steve McPherson / Via youtube.com

Watch Allen Iverson rant about practice here:

NBA / Via youtube.com

In expletive-laced comments, Simmons called Goodell a liar, then challenged ESPN to censure him.

Joe Murphy/NBAE / Getty Images

On his B.S. Report podcast Monday, Simmons repeatedly called Goodell a liar. The comments were in reference to a video showing Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice hitting his then-fiancee in February. Simmons said the NFL knew about the video before it went public, despite Goodell claiming otherwise.

I'm just saying it. He is lying. I think that dude is lying. If you put him up on a lie detector test, that guy would fail. For all these people to pretend they didn't know is such fucking bullshit. It really is — it's such fucking bullshit. And for him to go in that press conference and pretend otherwise, I was so insulted. I really was.

Simmons later challenged ESPN to penalize him, saying he really hoped "somebody calls me or emails me and says I'm in trouble for anything I say about Roger Goodell. Because if one person says that to me, I'm going public."

In response, ESPN suspended him for three weeks:

Every employee must be accountable to ESPN and those engaged in our editorial operations must also operate within ESPN's journalistic standards. We have worked hard to ensure that our recent NFL coverage has met that criteria. Bill Simmons did not meet those obligations in a recent podcast, and as a result we have suspended him for three weeks.

Earlier this month, Simmons wondered "how the hell" Goodell still had his job. He later wrote that "Goodell is the worst sports commissioner of my lifetime." He has also tweeted critically about Goodell:

View Entire List ›

These perfectly timed action photos show why professional athletes make the big bucks.

Streeter Lecka / Getty Images

REUTERS © Andres Stapff / Reuters

Getty Images Ward

USA Today Sports © USA Today Sports / Reuters

View Entire List ›

“I might be nervous and scared beyond words, but I’ll never let her see it.”

The inspirational story of Devon Still and his daughter continues. As the two were making their way to the hospital for Leah's pediatric cancer surgery, Still posted this video to his Instagram:

Devon Still / Via instagram.com

You ready, Leah?

Devon Still / Via instagram.com

*FIST BUMP*

Devon Still / Via instagram.com

LINK: The Cincinnati Bengals Restored Some Faith In The NFL By Standing By Devon Still

View Entire List ›

Thanks for everything, captain.

Since 1995, Derek Jeter has brought nothing but class and talent to the New York Yankees.

Jim McIsaac / Via Getty Images

And his fans are really going to miss his presence after he leaves the Bronx for good.

Al Bello / Via Getty Images

Especially the way he walked up to the plate when it was his turn at bat.

Via thegameswelove.tumblr.com

Not to mention his wildly impressive skills that allowed him to throw a baseball like this.

Via thegameswelove.tumblr.com

View Entire List ›

Mike Stobe / Getty Images

Mike Stobe / Getty Images

USA Today Sports / Reuters

Getty Images Elsa

Getty Images Mike Stobe

Al Bello / Getty Images

Elsa / Getty Images

Mike Stobe / Getty Images

Al Bello / Getty Images

Al Bello / Getty Images

Mike Segar / Reuters

Getty Images Mike Stobe

Mike Stobe / Getty Images

Elsa / Getty Images

Alex Trautwig / Getty Images

Mike Stobe / Getty Images

Elsa / Getty Images

Elsa / Getty Images

Al Bello / Getty Images

Mike Stobe / Getty Images

Jeter

These photos are evidence that Eli has absolutely zero swag.

Donald Miralle / Getty Images

Al Bello / Getty Images

Reuters Photographer / Reuter

Reuters Photographer / Reuter

View Entire List ›

TURN DOWN FOR WHAT!

This past weekend the Seattle Mariners went up against and defeated the Los Angeles Angels. However, the big news to come out of the game was Mariner Tom Wilhelmsen showing Safeco Field his moves.

instagram.com

"Turn Down for What" by DJ Snake and Lil Jon came over the fields speakers and Wilhelmsen immediately went for it.

instagram.com

White boy has some moves!

instagram.com

The fellow Mariners really had no idea what to make of it, but they knew Wilhelmsen was happy, which is all that matters.

instagram.com

View Entire List ›

Sometimes it looks like they are playing this game in outer space.

Gregory Shamus / Getty Images

Ezra Shaw / Getty Images

Carr / Getty Images

USA Today Sports / Reuters

View Entire List ›

Just to be clear, the Red Sox and Yankees are not options.

Via Flickr: design-dog

Snoop lashed out at the Steelers offensive coordinator Todd Haley via Instagram last night over the team’s last-second loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Everyone knows Snoop Dogg has been a huge Steelers fan since way back.

LUCY NICHOLSON/AFP / Getty Images

So when Buccaneers player Vincent Jackson scored a game-winning touchdown against them with seven seconds left, Snoop wasn't happy.

Justin K. Aller / Getty Images

So he took took Instagram with his frustrations:

instagram.com

And called out offensive coordinator Todd Haley for not being able to get 10 yards to end the game.

Jared Wickerham / Getty Images

View Entire List ›

An article on Esquire.com suggests that ESPN is hosting a domestic violence panel discussion during Monday Night Football featuring only men. Not true.

Esquire has apologized to ESPN.

Esquire.com posted the following note to the top of its article "ESPN Has A Problem With Women" and changed the headline to "On ESPN And Domestic Violence":

The original opening sentence of this piece was widely interpreted as saying that ESPN was set to run a special panel, hosted only by men, which would address the specific subject of domestic violence in the NFL. In fact, we believed the pre-game show was to run as normal, with a segment on domestic violence. We apologize for the confusion that the language of our opening statement created and we have been told that ESPN was not planning to cover this topic in such a format and has covered domestic violence on air before with its female commentators. The first sentence and headline have been amended to reflect this change.

Additionally, we would like to apologize for saying that ESPN is not in the business of journalism. They have produced excellent journalism over the years, such as last year's NFL At a Crossroads: Investigating a Health Crisis.—Kate Lewis, VP, Content Operations & Editorial Director

The article begins:

On Monday night, a panel on a two-hour pregame show for Monday Night Football will, among other things, address domestic abuse. This panel will discuss, once again, the appropriate penalty for hitting a woman.

The panel for that discussion will include the following people: Chris Berman, Cris Carter, Mike Ditka, Adam Schefter, Tom Jackson, Keyshawn Johnson, Jon Gruden, Mike Tirico, Stuart Scott, Steve Young and Ray Lewis.

Up to 11 men, all between the ages of 39 and 74 will sit at the table for a domestic violence discussion on ESPN. Zero women. Victims of domestic violence in America are most likely to be women aged 20-24.

When the show has updates from the field—brief reports about injuries and the upcoming game—they'll cut to female sideline reporters, Lisa Salters and, on some weeks, Suzy Kolber.

These people are not allowed at the table.

View Entire List ›

Nikki Miller, 16, may have run away, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department said. UPDATE: Miller was found safe Monday night.

Retired NBA player Reggie Miller asked his thousands of Twitter followers Monday to look out for his missing 16-year-old niece.

Nikki Miller disappeared from her Yorba Linda, California, bedroom sometime between 10:30 p.m. and 7 a.m. Sunday night to Monday morning, her parents told the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

"We are treating this as a runaway-type situation," Lt. John Roche told BuzzFeed News Monday evening.

When her family discovered she wasn't in her room Monday morning deputies arrived to investigate. Her room had been arranged to make it seem like she was still asleep, Roche said, and there was no sign of a struggle or forced entry.

But there also wasn't any sign of why she might have left. She had no history of running away, and there had been no argument or turmoil within the family, Roche said.

"We don't know why this occurred," he said.

Deputies searched the area for several hours, and bloodhounds were called in to look for any trace of her. Authorities in neighboring cities were also alerted, and her name and description were entered into a missing persons database.

During Monday night’s game, the Kansas City safety, who is Muslim, was penalized for “unsportsmanlike behavior” when he prayed to celebrate his touchdown. An NFL spokesman said Tuesday that he should not have been penalized.

Abdullah kneeled and touched his forehead to the ground in Muslim prayer after scoring the second touchdown of his career.

instagram.com

According to SBNation, the referee flagged him for "unsportsmanlike conduct, going to the ground." According to the NFL rulebook, players are prohibited from engaging in prolonged or excessive celebrations while on the ground.

In this interview, Pereira said:

"The whole issue is, you can't go to the ground on your knees or with your hand or anything. There's only one time that you're going to be allowed to go on your knee after you score like this, and that's when you want to praise the Lord. If you do that, then I'm going to allow that, because I do not want to be struck by lightning, I promise you that. We will allow that."

View Entire List ›