Roger Goodell is happier Super Bowl times. Photograph by Staff Sgt. Bradley Lail, USAF

A shout-out to two former colleagues covering the NFL’s domestic abuse crisis.

Jane McManus of ESPN continues her fine reporting with a piece on the NFL’s addition of more women to the team that will ultimately help clean up this mess. A revelation: Off the Field, the NFL wives organization, is just being included in the discussion now. (Apparently, a first letter from the wives to the league was lost. What a surprise.)

If you’ve been reading this blog, then you know that Jane and I worked together at The Journal News, a Gannett publication. One of our estimable colleagues was longtime religion reporter Gary Stern, who contributed a piece on the entwined lives of NFL commish Roger Goodell and suspended player Ray Rice in the paper’s Oct. 5 edition.

Goodell came from white privilege in Bronxville, N.Y.; Rice, from the black projects in nearby New Rochelle. Now they are forever united in a tale of spousal abuse and football misogyny that all the pink ribbons in the world can’t erase.

Indeed, seeing those grace notes of pink as Colin Kaepernick and the embattled San Francisco 49ers beat former Niner quarterback Alex Smith and the Kansas City Chiefs Oct. 5 by a score of 22-17, made me wonder the extent to which NFL Nation really cares about breast cancer.

Or if to football players breasts are nothing more than enticing accessories for a stripper.