The new NFL was on display Wednesday afternoon when it suspended Cowboys defensive end Greg Hardy for the first 10 games of 2015 season, without pay, for allegedly assaulting and threatening to kill his former girlfriend in May 2014. Though a judge found him guilty in a bench trial last July, Hardy was ultimately cleared of wrongdoing by the North Carolina judicial system in February, when prosecutors dropped charges instead of proceeding to a jury trial.
But the new NFL, in which a former sex-crimes prosecutor handles domestic-violence investigations and a former ATF czar oversees disciplinary rulings, didn’t rely on a conviction in order to proceed with severe punishment.