I’ve been out of town the last two weeks, one of those being
spent road tripping throughout the South.
Keeping tabs on the sports world was not an easy task, but the fact that
everyone in the car had a smart phone made it at least a little more
possible. I did get to catch a
majority of the first round of NCAA games, albeit only bits and pieces of each
as we moved from one bar to another.
As we honed back in on the Mason-Dixon Line, I began to think about
which college basketball team would be the focus of my first column in some
time. Then, in a matter of ESPN
App iPhone reloads, our car was hit with a series of trumping NFL issues: Tim
Tebow was to become a New York Jet and the New Orleans Saints (just three days
after we left the city) officially committed the greatest mistake in NFL
history. When you throw in the
now-stale Peyton Manning situation, it was clear that even in a month for
college basketball, football still dominates the American sports universe.
Even though the news of the bounty system is several weeks
old, the piece of the situation that I have the most challenging time
rationalizing is that the Saints, a team that since Hurricane Katrina and the
acquisition of Drew Brees has been portrayed as a prideful, passionate, and
unified team solely dedicated to bringing success to perhaps the most tormented
yet loyal fan base in the country, is now characterized as a collection of
lawless degenerates. The most
striking example of this transformation has to be Sean Payton, who’s 5.8
million dollar fine and season-long suspension are by far the most severe penalty to be handed out to a professional
head coach/manager ever – with the exception of Pete Rose, whose situation is
obviously different. Payton was
the face of all that was good with the Saints.
 |
| It is hard to picture the New Orleans Saints without Sean Payton on the sidelines. |
Anyone who had a chance to listen to the Jabari Greer
interview on Sports Center this past week certainly got a sense of this. He lamented that the men on New Orleans
are individuals of good character and not interested in ending the careers of
their football brethren. Hearing
him say these types of things amid the essentially undeniable evidence that the
alternative was true made him sound foolish. Then again, it’s easy to see his perspective. Should their role in the bounty system
become the exception rather than the case? Were they really
trying to hurt opposing players or simply priding themselves on doing so? Is there a difference?
It’s easy to answer yes or no to these questions, but like
most things, I doubt either truly encapsulates the situation. It will take a good deal of time before
we can sort out this scenario. In
the meantime, Saints players, especially those on the defensive side of the
football, are going to have a very similar experience as did players on the
Miami Heat last year and up through the present. The Saints and its players, many of whom cherished what was
perhaps an overblown role as the pride of a fallen city, are now the
league-wide bad guys. How will
they react when the first random, non-rival fan base boos them as they run out
of the tunnel? Only time will tell
if they can handle this indefinitely long-lasting role.
Getting back to the subsequent punishments, my first
reaction was that the league went too far. New Orleans has lost much of its ability to acquire elite
talent through the draft via the removal of two second round picks. The Saints were also fined half a
million dollars. But the most
extreme penalty of all (excluding Greg Williams who is no longer with the team)
is the handling of Sean Payton.
When commenting on the bounty system earlier in the month I
said it was silly to compare this situation with any other scandal, namely
Spygate. However, upon first
hearing the news, my mind immediately went to the penalties levied against
Belichick. At the time, his
500,000-dollar fine seemed heavy.
Now, it’s a slap on the wrist.
In reality, the Sean Payton/Greg Williams penalty must be looked at with
respect to, based on its severity, any
other NFL violation. The question
is not whether this was an offense worse than spy gate. We must ask, is this the worst offense ever?
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| Payton's penalty was hardly a maximum sentence. Anything less would have been inadequate. |
Maybe the injury-incentive system wasn’t the worst thing to
ever come about, but it must be the most counter-reformation move in the league’s
history. Thirty years ago this
would have never seen such a response.
Many have contended it took place back in the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, and
across rosters in the present day.
If this is actually the case, the only reason we never heard about it
was that a bounty system wasn’t juicy enough to warrant an sneaky/snitch-like
confession and subsequent full-scale investigation.
But now?
Nothing is of greater importance to Roger Goodell and the
NFL than player safety. For some,
this is an area in which the league has previously lagged far behind. Others think player safety should be
all but irrelevant, citing the nobody-is-making-them-play argument. While I certainly do not believe a
bounty system is the worst thing we will discover to exist within different
organizations, it is hard to think of something else that could be so
detrimental to stressing player safety than stressing player injury.
It is imperative that the league handles this situation
appropriately. Throwing the
checkbook at meatheads like James Harrison is far easier than taxing a
mild-mannered, iconic, and seemingly infallible coach. I first thought the penalty was too
strong, but soon realized Goodell needed
to set a precedent. Any attempts
made to civilize football, whether you agree with them or not, would have been
made all but void if the perception was that he dished out an innocuous
punishment to coaches and executives.
New Orleans has been made an example for the rest of the league and you
have to imagine that any further violations will be met with even more severe
punishments.
Whether you like the direction in which the NFL is headed or
not, the punishment in the Big Easy was the bare minimum that could have
occurred without jeopardizing the NFL’s stance on player safety.
-AW
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