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- The Dude
Doug Farrar over at Yahoo Sports wrote:
The severe suspensions and fines handed out to several current and former Saints coaches and executives -- this was the atomic bomb Goodell had been waiting for. Goodell and the league know full well, and for a good long time, that players were being paid under the table for tackles meant to injure opponents at a level that would have those opponents out of games entirely.
"Beyond the clear and continuing violations of league rules, and lying to investigators, the bounty program is squarely contrary to the league's most important initiatives — enhancing player health and safety and protecting the integrity of the game," Goodell said in his Wednesday statement announcing the penalties. "Let me be clear. There is no place in the NFL for deliberately seeking to injure another player, let alone offering a reward for doing so. Any form of bounty is incompatible with our commitment to create a culture of sportsmanship, fairness, and safety. Programs of this kind have no place in our game and we are determined that bounties will no longer be a part of the NFL."
That's good league-speak, but [hil]the Saints got in the way of a higher imperative[/hil]. Just as Major League Baseball Commissioners Kenesaw Mountain Landis and A. Bartlett Giamatti did in the Chicago Black Sox and Pete Rose cases, and just as NBA Commissioner David Stern did in the Tim Donaghy case, Goodell was able to exact the most severe punishment possible because he had three things in his favor: [hil]a desperate need to end something rotten in his sport, a mandate for change (whether external of self-invented), and an easy target (or series of targets) on which to drop that bomb.[/hil] And if you think that players betting on baseball and crooked zebras are more dangerous to a league than a bunch of coaches acting like Jon Voight in Varsity Blues, stay tuned. There are moral and ethical tripwires in what the Saints did, and that is at the very heart of what Goodell is trying to destroy by any means necessary.
The severe suspensions and fines handed out to several current and former Saints coaches and executives -- this was the atomic bomb Goodell had been waiting for. Goodell and the league know full well, and for a good long time, that players were being paid under the table for tackles meant to injure opponents at a level that would have those opponents out of games entirely.
"Beyond the clear and continuing violations of league rules, and lying to investigators, the bounty program is squarely contrary to the league's most important initiatives — enhancing player health and safety and protecting the integrity of the game," Goodell said in his Wednesday statement announcing the penalties. "Let me be clear. There is no place in the NFL for deliberately seeking to injure another player, let alone offering a reward for doing so. Any form of bounty is incompatible with our commitment to create a culture of sportsmanship, fairness, and safety. Programs of this kind have no place in our game and we are determined that bounties will no longer be a part of the NFL."
That's good league-speak, but [hil]the Saints got in the way of a higher imperative[/hil]. Just as Major League Baseball Commissioners Kenesaw Mountain Landis and A. Bartlett Giamatti did in the Chicago Black Sox and Pete Rose cases, and just as NBA Commissioner David Stern did in the Tim Donaghy case, Goodell was able to exact the most severe punishment possible because he had three things in his favor: [hil]a desperate need to end something rotten in his sport, a mandate for change (whether external of self-invented), and an easy target (or series of targets) on which to drop that bomb.[/hil] And if you think that players betting on baseball and crooked zebras are more dangerous to a league than a bunch of coaches acting like Jon Voight in Varsity Blues, stay tuned. There are moral and ethical tripwires in what the Saints did, and that is at the very heart of what Goodell is trying to destroy by any means necessary.
