Why was Reed punished, and Hill not?

Who exactly doles out punishments for the National Football League?

Muhammad bin Salman, maybe?

In case you don’t remember, he’s the loveable Saudi Arabian crown prince who orders executions of pretty much anyone who greets him the wrong way.

But at the same time, the prince sits around eating dates with plenty of other gruesome characters at the palace.

To be fair, the NFL hasn’t gotten around to beheadings — at least not yet — but the league’s decisions on who gets whacked and who walks away seem as strange and capricious as those doled out by our pal Muhammad.

And timely?

Hah.

The six-game suspension handed to Seahawks defensive tackle Jarran Reed last week came two and a half years after the incident in which Reed allegedly shoved a young woman around in a Bellevue home.

Reed has played two seasons since the event, and it’s not like the thing was a secret, since Bellevue police were summoned to the scene that night in April of 2017.

Ultimately, no charges were filed against Reed or anyone else.

That’s right, no charges at all.

AND LET me say this again for emphasis…

This happened more than two years ago, and Reed’s name has been completely erased from the Bellevue police blotter.

It makes you wonder if the NFL checked on Reed all the way back to elementary school, just to see if he was ever involved in a spitball fight.

Seahawk fans and the team itself would like to understand the punishment here but Muhammed — oops, sorry, Roger Goodell — has chosen not to comment or release any public statement on Reed’s suspension.

In case you haven’t already picked up on the football side of this, missing Reed will be a very big deal for the Hawks. This is a guy who had 10 1/2 sacks last season, a huge number for anyone playing in the middle of the line.

What’s more, Seattle isn’t quite sure about the early-season health of newcomer Ziggy Ansah, the Seahawks’ replacement for Frank Clark — so, yeah, they could start the regular season without either of their main pass rushers.

Yikes!

Reed has said he disagrees entirely with the NFL’s action, but he’ll abide by the decision.

Sure, because…

What the hell else can he do?

WHAT MAKES the Reed punishment even more bizarre is that the verdict was handed down in the same week that the NFL chose to take no action against Kansas City’s dynamic wide receiver, Tyreek Hill.

Hill’s case, which originated just five months ago, involved the possibility that Tyreek or his wife may have caused their 3-year-old son to sustain a broken arm.

Much like the Reed situation, authorities in Johnson County, Kansas, were called to Hill’s home, eventually conducted an investigation, and then announced that no charges would be filed.

The kicker in Hill’s case, however (besides the fact that he pleaded guilty to domestic abuse while at Oklahoma State), was that a Kansas City radio station played a brief, edited version of a supposedly secret tape in which Hill and his fiancée, Krystal Espinal, accused each other of hurting their son and Hill was heard making an ugly threat toward his wife.

That tape had fans up in arms, but it turned out that what had gone public was only part of an 11-minute recording in which Hill sounds completely innocent.

NFL investigators later interviewed the star wideout for eight hours, while Espinal refused to be heard by the league.

Despite the initial uproar, Hill seems to have been tried and lynched by the media — but nothing more.

It appears the league and the Chiefs did the right thing.

This is a team that released running back Kareem Hunt, the league’s leading rusher, just one day after a video emerged that showed Hunt kicking a woman in a hotel hallway.

The Chiefs held off on discipline for Hill, likely because NFL investigators told the club that it looked as though Tyreek was not guilty.

WE SHOULD have no quarrel with the way the league handled the Hill case.

Unless more evidence turns up (very unlikely), justice was served and the young man now can get back to terrorizing NFL defensive backs.

My complaint with all this hoopla is that the very public investigation of Tyreek Hill — and the league’s detailed statement when announcing no punishment — was done promptly and with great transparency.

Fair enough.

But…

What about Jarran Reed?

We don’t know what investigation was done, when the league even looked into the matter and, in basically the only similarity to Tyreek Hill, no charges ever were filed.

Why the suspension, then?

The Seahawks lose a very, very valuable piece of their defense for six games (including the Steelers, Saints, Rams and Browns), just as they open the season with Ansah as a question mark.

The Reed inquiry lasted almost as long as a Congressional hearing, and all for what sounds like shoving a woman at a party.

Look, if Jarran did what the league now claims, it was wrong and he should be punished.

Reed has been suspended without pay, and it will cost him a tidy $409,411.

I can live with that outcome, assuming the accusations were correct and that Jarran now has learned a valuable lesson.

But for heaven’s sake, the NFL’s famous “personal conduct policy” should be enforced with some sort of equality.

One player had a cloud hanging over him for two and a half years, and then was suspended without comment from the league.

Another player’s case — which involved the possible abuse of a child — was wrapped up in just a few months and the NFL issued a detailed statement explaining its decision.

Does that sound like even-handed justice, even if both decisions were correct?

Not even close.

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns for The Press appear on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Steve also contributes the “Zags Tracker” package on Gonzaga basketball once monthly during the offseason.

Email: scameron@cdapress.com