Katie Nolan Unloads on NFL and Sports Media for Not Taking Domestic Abuse Seriously

In April, the NFL suspended Dallas Cowboy Greg Hardy after the league’s months-long investigation found that there was evidence that he’d physically abused his then-girlfriend, Nicole Holder. Hardy allegedly threatened to kill her, choked her, and threw her onto a couch covered in assault rifles.

Hardy’s suspension is now over (his initial punishment of being benched for 10 games was reduced to four), and he recently told reporters that he plans to return to the field “guns blazing,” which is a very strange turn of phrase for someone who’s only recently been penalized for threatening a woman with firearms. None of the reporters in the Dallas locker room this week called Hardy out on his idiotic and remorseless comments, and Katie Nolan used a segment of her excellent Fox Sports show Garbage Time to go after her colleagues’ carelessness.

In the clip above, Nolan points out how it’s clear that the NFL, the media, and Hardy himself have absolutely no respect for survivors of domestic violence. And that’s not just because Hardy wasn’t punished more harshly—it’s because he couldn’t pretend to regret assaulting a woman for even “12 minutes” upon his return.

Aside from the “guns blazing” line, Nolan points out that Hardy couldn’t even admit any regret about battering his former girlfriend. When asked whether he had any remorse for what he’d done, Hardy responded by apologizing to his teammates for not being there when he should have been. “The worst thing in the world is not being there for someone you care about or someone that needs you,” he told reporters. Some more comments about his return:

In her monologue, Nolan doesn’t just limit her ire to Hardy. A large part of the blame, she notes, goes out to the reporters, who not only didn’t press the player on the reasons for his suspension and allowed him to go on about Tom Brady’s hot wife (Brady’s not bothered, by the way) and guns, but even asked him to comment on the hotness of other players’ girlfriends.

“What are we fucking doing,” Nolan asks. “What matters to you?”

This isn’t even an isolated incident for this week. As Deadspin reports, last weekend, Grizzlies player Matt Barnes drove almost 100 miles to crash the party of his estranged wife—who he’s been accused of abusing—just so he could intimidate her current boyfriend, New York Knicks Coach Derek Fisher, for messing with his property. Sports reporters treated the incident as if it were a Saturday Night Live skit.