From a book chapter I wrote for Scandal in the Digital Age two years ago on the Ray Rice story:

The presence of video surveillance of the domestic violence, particularly the video that showed the actual assault, changed the story narrative. Ironically, the graphic video of the actual assault did not bring additional criticism of the perpetrator (at least in sports media coverage) but instead changed the focus of the story to the institution of the NFL—a pattern familiar in media coverage of scandals. The social construction of news—specifically, news values of deviance and journalists’ reliance on sources—also led to the evolu- tion of the scandal. Because of these factors, by the end of the year, the Ray Rice scandal was about Roger Goodell and the institution of the NFL. The scandal evolved to the point that Ray Rice was only a tangential part of the scandal itself.

Several years later, the Kareem Hunt story is following a similar pattern.

This has become less about Kareem Hunt’s actions and much more about the NFL and the Chiefs’ institutional response to it.