TheOak

I think there are a few misconceptions about RG1.

First being that he solely conceives punishments on his own: He doesn't, he probably is slave to 3 entities. First being his own whimsical brain farts, second being his 32 bosses (Team Owners), third being the NFL's complete Law firm. Everything he does is fully vetted by this NFL's legal team. I am sure that same legal team told him "come down hard on the Saints so we can show later we cracked down on injuries around the league". He just does not have the intelligence to manage his masters.

Second being that he has destroyed the Saints hopes for 2012. Nahhh he is just making it a little more difficult to manage. He is not competent enough to destroy our season.

What RG1 has done is damage more than just New Orleans, he has damaged the NFL and new draftee's. Ill explain what he did and what I would have done had I been in his seat. Actually being a Saints fan I would have punished both Atlanta and Minnesota for ANYTHING the Saints have done.... But that's just me.

His punishment and the issues I have with it (a little thought would have made it a lot more painful):

Suspending Payton for a year: Yes this hurt but not crippling... The part that Payton lied had has not been proven, and a year suspension for lying? RG1 lies every time he is in front of the TV. Most importantly whether an answer is truthful or not does not solely depend on reality, it depends on how the question was asked. Say what you like but this entire ordeal is a manipulation of gray-items.

Suspending Loomis for 8 games: Big hurah... Not as damaging as perceived.

Suspending Vitt for 6 games: Your reaching now RG1. Reaching deep. Actually removing the secondary candidate was not just punishment, it was spiteful vengeance. I doubt you have anything on Vitt to justify this.

Indefinite Suspension Williams: Did not hurt New Orleans at all. Hurt the Rams though, The NFL was looking into this long before Williams went to the Rams, their failure to act hurt the Rams.

Fining the Saints: $500,000 (what is this to a billion dollar franchise?) Merely a gesture. Forbes valued the Saints at $965M in 2011.

Draft pics taken away: Considering rookies rarely make a huge impact outside of the first 15 picks this didn't hurt us to bad. This actually hurt innocent players. There are 32 pick per round. Each and every draft pick taken away from any team directly causes a rookie to be drafted in a later round thus reducing his contract value.

Dragging this crap out: He is damaging the NFL by dragging this out and keeping it in the head lines WAY longer than it should be. He should have finished his complete investigation, then doled out all punishments at once... effective immediately. At this point he looks indecisive, incompetent, and unstable.

If I were in his desk and wanted to drop the Hammer on New Orleans, I would have done the following.

Loomis - Nothing. Going to need him to address Salary Cap issues
Vitt - Nothing
Payton - Nothing
Williams - Banned from NFL. Lifetime, period (make the example), Facts show he did this everywhere he was.
Team Fine - None - Loss of Super Bowl venue for 10 years.
Draft Picks - Nothing
Players - Million Dollar fines for everyone that I have PROOF participated, regardless of what they are presently on... Set up a payment plan, what ever.. You will pay.
Salary Cap - $30M hit for the 2012 season.... Deal with it.


We still do not know what the clear problem is. Is it the intent or the execution of the intent... Is it a player safety issue or a pay for x issue. Cant prove execution injuring opponents. If you are going off of verbiage and intent, well you can nail just about every player in the NFL.

Have we seen:
Proof that someone was paid because someone was injured.- No
Proof that someone was injured because of the bounty program? - No
Proof that there was a Bounty Program? - Yes, for multiple teams going back three decades at least... Which means what? That this is not a Saints issue, it is a systemic NFL cultural issue. Obviously the "they did it also" doesn't work but "everyone is doing it", sets a precedent as well. The fact that multiple players have come out ans STATED they did the same thing but only the Saints are being punished tells me Goodell is not trying to make the entire league safer.

If RG1 were competent, if he really had a clue about football culture and the NFL's culture, and actually had a Zero tolerance policy on Bounties. He would have not sent the Saints "memo" in 2009. He would have known it was systemic and ALL teams would have been warned of a Zero Tolerance policy in 2009 and made that statement public to keep injury lawyers off of his back.

I know this starts off feeling like I am trying to absolve him from any stupidity and I am not.... It should in its entirety show he is just flat out incompetent. Thus showing that the 32 owners are not as sharp as perceived because they leave him in power.

By Nature of RG1's sheer incompetence he is a bigger liability to the NFL than anything else. Repeatedly getting in front of a reporter and stating "not yet but soon", "not this week but soon", he is single-handedly keeping this on the front burner for all sports news organizations.

saintfan

The whole dragging it out is by design in my opinion. The NFL NEEDS this to stay in the public eye. It doesn't want anybody to forget how it lowered the boom in the name of player safety. BECAUSE the NFL, for years, decades even, tried to brush off player safety (and in fact celebrated the game's most violent plays and players) it now has to march double-time to the "we care" band.

It's about money. Period.

TheOak

Keeping this in the public eye does not generate any money, it actually risks "turning people off" to the NFL.

It generates a whole lot of undue risk.

Players in front of camera slipping about bounty programs on other teams is a problem.

Goodell not cracking down on ALL KNOWN teams and players that have openly admitted to having Bounty programs is a problem.

Any Lawyer could stand in front of a jury and easily paint the following picture.

"The NFL made a "show" in regards to the Saints bounty program, but took no real action against it as a whole. Multiple people have made public statements that there were bounty programs on other teams, involving other people, through out decades of football and the NFL has done nothing."

"In fact it glamorizes violence and to this day has done nothing to stop that, injuring hits are replayed over and over on televised games."

However anyone's lawsuit against the NFL for concussions can easily be put way with a precedent. "NFL Players just like Professional Boxers know the risk and do nothing to avoid it."

Sorry, I am a conservative and do not believe everyone should be protected from their own stupidity. It dumbs down the country. Football and Boxing are risk/reward sports. You want the millions you have to accept the risk.. Hell if you want the hundreds of thousands you have to accept that risk.

saintfan

Go watch Goodell on Youtube being grilled by congress. The NFL doesn't want to have people think that IT thinks it found a problem, dealt with it, and now everything is peaches and cream.

The NFL is now marketing itself as the enforcer of player safety, and enforcers don't sit quietly. Is the league happy about the public nature of the lawsuits? Of course not, but it's not going away, so in a very public and continuous way, the NFL has to broadcast its efforts to clean it up - it's milking this for everything it is worth. Believe that.

Goodell knows right now what he knew two months ago about which players were involved and to what degree. He knew prior to any interview with any player precisely what he was going to do, evidence be damned. There is plenty of precedence to support that assessment.

No, there's only one reason why this has been dragged out and continues to be dragged out, and I'm speaking about handing down punishment to players: The "Story" is what will the NFL do? The "Story" will soon be, "can you believe the league was so heavy-handed?" The "Story", from the league's perspective, needs to remain a viable one as long as possible because, at least for now, the league is not reacting to damaging accusations but is instead lowering the boom on people violating the sanctity of player safety. The longer the league can be perceived as the aggressor, the better.

C'mon Man...

Rugby Saint II

Boy was I wrong........Up until this broke I thought he was doing alright with the CBA and everything else. My bad.