A common theme has been appearing in the NFL recently: more than 87 arrests have been made involving 80 professional football players because of domestic violence.

The most recent issue that has come up concerns Baltimore Ravens’ running back Ray Rice, who was convicted of simple assault domestic violence on Feb. 15, after knocking unconscious his fiancée of the time (now wife), Janay Palmer.

This incident has rightfully received much attention, and is not being dismissed easily. It is never acceptable for a man to hit a woman, especially his wife, no matter the situation.

The couple was at Revel Casino and Hotel in Atlantic City, NJ, when this altercation occurred.

The casino video footage shows both Rice and Palmer in the hotel elevator alone, clearly unhappy with each other. Palmer aggressively approaches Rice as they are verbally arguing, and Rice forcefully punches her multiple times in the face and causes her to fall and hit her head against the railing.

Rice first spoke about this issue on May 23, at a news conference in Atlantic City. He was accompanied by his wife, mother, and daughter. Janay Rice sat next to her husband at this conference and also apologized for her role in that night.

“I failed miserably,” Ray Rice told SB Nation. “But I wouldn’t call myself a failure cause I’m working myself back up.”

Stuck in the mindset that he has done nothing wrong and that apologies fix all, Rice is unaware of the damage he has done to his wife, his family, and the face of the NFL.

At first, Rice was only given a two game suspension by the NFL, but after another video was released by TMZ on Sept. 8, Rice was released by the Ravens and indefinitely suspended from the NFL.

Continuously attending conferences, the couple began to get upset with the media for the amount of attention this incident was receiving.

“Reality is a nightmare in itself,” says Janay Rice, when criticizing the media for causing pain to her family. “To make us relive a moment in our lives that we regret everyday is a horrible thing.”

Rather than blaming her abusive husband, Janay Rice decided to blame the media for her problems.

Still to be determined is what the NFL knew and when they knew it. Some sources say NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, received the video of this incident in April, but others say that the video was not released to anyone until Sept 8.

It seems as if the NFL was trying to protect Ray Rice and let him continue playing. It wasn’t until the video of him went viral and the media began to speak out, that Goodell knew what had to be done.

Some sports fans and journalists have been noticing a double standard between other NFL players.

Twelve professional football players with domestic violence arrests since 2005 are still suiting up on Sundays and playing for their teams. Some fought the charges and won, while others accepted blame, served short suspensions and returned to the game.

San Francisco 49ers’ defensive end Ray McDonald was also involved with a case of domestic violence last month. The team is still deciding what his consequences will be, if there are any at all. He may be suspended, his contract may be terminated, or he may continue to play as if he did nothing wrong.

Ray Rice, however, will never play professional football again.

Domestic violence is becoming more and more publicized by professional athletes. This crime is not taken as seriously as one would hope, considering the amount of professional athletes that are still playing today despite the horrible crime they have committed.