It’s time for Ray Rice to be given a chance to return to the National Football League.

This is not a popular opinion. Eleven months after the awful video surfaced showing him punching his soon-to-be wife, Rice remains a pariah. Most Americans view him as the personification of domestic violence, and he says he understands that. Most NFL teams are afraid to touch him, fearing the public onslaught that is certain to come should they bring him in, and he says he understands that, too.

The vast majority of us are hoping he never plays another down in the NFL as eternal punishment for the terrible things he did.

But if we believe that, we are rooting for the wrong thing. What are we as a society if we don’t give some people second chances? Especially people who go on TV and say things like this:

“Domestic violence is real,” Rice told ESPN’s Jemele Hill in an interview airing this week. “It happens every 12 seconds as we speak. I made a life-long commitment to my wife and to my daughter, to the survivors of domestic violence, to go out there and not only help but share my story so that men can make better decisions. That was the worst decision I’ve ever made in my life.

“To the survivors of domestic violence, I understand how real it is, and I don’t want to ever take that for granted because this is a real issue in our society. My video put the light out there. If you have never seen what domestic violence looks like and you look at my video, I could understand why some people would never forgive me.”

Have we heard anything like this from Greg Hardy or Adrian Peterson, both of whom will be playing again this year? We have not, and what Hardy did was worse than what Rice did. Lucky him, he was not caught on video throwing his then-girlfriend on a futon covered with at least four semiautomatic rifles and three other guns, dragging her by her hair from room to room and putting his hands around her throat, leaving bruises and scratches.

Cynics will say Rice gave this interview to try to get back into the NFL’s good graces. Perhaps. But Rice did say those words, and he said them on ESPN, where many will hear them, especially many young men.

“I always preach one or two bad decisions and your dream could become a nightmare,” Rice said. “But I think that every step that I took going forward right now, over time, I want to be able to rewrite the script, to tell my daughter that Daddy made the worst decision of his life, but this is what I did going forward.”

This is a powerful message. It’s one we should hear throughout the upcoming NFL season, and 28-year-old Rice is the perfect man to deliver it.

If he never plays another minute in the league, he can still be a strong advocate on this issue. But if we’re really serious about reaching the right people when talking about domestic violence, don’t we want Rice speaking from the grandest stage possible? If he’s in an NFL uniform, with a microphone in front of him, repeating the words he said on TV this week, the cause of eradicating domestic violence will never reach a wider audience.

No team will sign a football player as a spokesman only, and Rice’s football worth is uncertain at best. He had a disappointing 2013 season, then missed the entire 2014 season because of his suspension, followed by a lack of interest from any NFL team.

There is a school of thought that says no player who commits domestic violence should ever be allowed back in the NFL. It’s an interesting idea, but it’s not a reality, at least not yet, not with the way the players union and the courts have wanted to get those men back on the field. What’s more, domestic violence experts say second chances are preferable in most cases.

So back comes Peterson, and, four weeks later, Hardy, too. As for Rice, he should get to join them this fall, if only so we can listen to what he has to say.

Follow columnist Christine Brennan on Twitter @cbrennansports.

SOURCE: USA Today