The NFL has already decided it can thrive while excluding women. Its handling of the Ray Rice mess has alienated millions of fans. Sponsors fleeing? They can be replaced. But Roger Goodell really stepped in it now: he's got Rihanna pissed off. 
 
 CBS's debut of its new Thursday Night Football package was to be a big event, with a big, dramatic intro featuring Don Cheadle narrating over Rihanna's verses from "Run This Town." In the wake of the league basically admitting it is awful on all things domestic violence, CBS decided it wasn't worth the risk to have one of America's most famous domestic violence victims kick off the action. 
 
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 It was a shitty situation for CBS to find itself in, but at the same time, what did Rihanna ever do to get bumped besides get punched repeatedly? 
 
 Rihanna's understanding of the situation is that her song will be a part of the next and future Thursday night broadcasts. Which means CBS thinks America is done being so sensitive. 
 
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 When you tweet with a location, Twitter stores that location. You can switch location on/off before each Tweet and always have the option to delete your location history. Learn more ||||| When CBS pulled Rihanna’s intro to its inaugural broadcast of Thursday Night Football, it was generally accepted as a prudent, no-brainer move. Given the simmering Ray Rice controversy, beginning a broadcast with the frivolity of a pop song would have been tone-deaf. But there was at least one person who was unhappy with the decision: 
 
 In a tweet sent Tuesday morning to her 37.2 million Twitter followers, Rihanna ripped CBS for pulling the intro, which features her singing a rendition of the 2009 Jay-Z hit Run This Town that also featured herself and Kanye West. The pop star suggests that she doesn’t want CBS to air the intro this week, though it’s not clear whether she can prevent that from happening. 
 
 Last week, CBS Sports said the intro, and a planned comedy bit which was also scrapped, didn’t fit with the serious tone of its hourlong pregame show. The first 25 minutes of that show focused exclusively on Ray Rice’s release and indefinite suspension after video of him striking his now-wife was released by TMZ. Included in those segments were a news report by CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley and a powerful plea from James Brown to stop domestic violence. 
 
 “We thought journalistically and from a tone standpoint, we needed to have the appropriate tone and coverage,” CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus told SI.com last week of the decision to bump Rihanna’s intro, among other features. “A lot of the production elements we wanted in the show are being eliminated because of time or tone.” 
 
 Also hanging over the planned intro was the 2009 incident in which Rihanna was the victim of an assault by singer Chris Brown, her then boyfriend. Brown received probation, counseling and community service after entering a guilty plea to one count of felony assault. 
 
 The audacity… — Rihanna (@rihanna) September 16, 2014 
 
 UPDATE: CBS has dropped Rihanna’s intro after her complaint.
– Last week, CBS dumped a Rihanna song from the first of its Thursday night NFL broadcasts, partially thanks to the Ray Rice situation and Rihanna's own connection to domestic violence at the hands of Chris Brown. Now, apparently, the network wants to include the song in this week's broadcast—and Rihanna is having none of it, Deadspin reports. "CBS you pulled my song last week, now you wanna slide it back in this Thursday? NO, F--- you! Y'all are sad for penalizing me for this," she tweeted today, followed by, "The audacity..." New York Times television reporter Bill Carter tweets that CBS has given in and will replace Rihanna on Thursday's show with "theme music created internally." Not everyone thinks the domestic violence link was the main reason the song was pulled in the first place—as USA Today notes, "Given the simmering Ray Rice controversy, beginning a broadcast with the frivolity of a pop song would have been tone-deaf. "