TheDeuce

I think the NFL has done a giant disservice to its fans in this entire ordeal. When I look at punishments for players, coaches, and franchises, I see two main methods: suspensions and fines.

Fines obviously affect whoever is being fined, and really nobody else. Suspensions, on the other hand, affect the person being suspended, the rest of the team (who may not have had any involvement with the behavior), the franchise as a whole, and most importantly the fans (who really had no involvement with the program). In other words, there's a lot of collateral damage when you suspend somebody.

If the NFL wanted to really hammer home the message that the bounty scandal should never happen again, they could have fined the players out the wazoo, and that would have been a very strong incentive about foregoing any plans for future bounty programs. Instead, they suspended the players, also a strong incentive, but in doing so they've weakened one of their brands and disallowed the team from fielding as competitive a team as they otherwise would have.

I guess my point is that they could have fined the players, coaches, GM, millions and millions of dollars, and that would have gotten their attention. What they did instead was suspend people which ultimately punishes the fans because they don't get to watch their favorite players, coaches, etc. For a league that is competing for fans' attention, worsening the product on the field seems counterintuitive.

TheOak

You missed one i have been bringing up...

Taking draft picks away: With a $500k difference between second and third rounds, having only 31 picks in the first round pushed some poor kid back to a different round etc...

JimmyB1775

Yeah, and Mr. Irrelevant may have been deemed somewhat relevant. Crazy ripple effect.

sharke

regarding the fines, isn't there a cap on how much a player can be fined?

saintfan

The only way the fans factor in is money. Look, those of us who are hard-core are pissed, but the NFL has to do what it's doing (even though it won't work) to give themselves the "we're trying" face in court.

The hard-core fans are pissed, but the league figures we'll get over it, and the league is probably right. The 'fringe' fans don't understand the violence that is part of the game. This ain't your daddy's NFL anymore. Those fringe fans are the ones the NFL is trying to lure in. It has to appease them, and, well, here we are...

C'mon Man...

SaintsBro

Agreed.

But with the exception of Fujita, I felt like all of the players who were punished for this, were also already somewhat in "trouble" with the league before, for different things, or were the general kind of players who caused previous PR problems for the league in the past (U of Miami guys, drugs in their past, Starcaps, cliché, cliché, etc., etc. I don't think this way, I mean the league does.).

It was like, "well, we couldn't get rid of you for that, so we will get you hard for THIS." Very predictable. Very ticky tacky. Same with Sean Payton's punishment; his particular punishment was way too severe for what really happened and what he did -- the size of his penalty very obviously had a lot to do with previous things or other things that he had done, that they couldn't nail him for: the friendship with Michael Ornstein, the (still unproven) Vicodin allegations, his public criticism of the new overtime rules, the way he berates and chews out the refs (and is usually right about it, makes 'em look bad), etc. etc. blah blah blah.

But yes, the fans do suffer. ESPECIALLY the paying fans, in the actual Superdome, who had just sent in their season ticket payments within days before this scandal broke...which has been one of my biggest beefs about it all along. They waited until Benson had sold out the Dome with our money before letting this thing drop, screwing the actual paying season ticket fans out of the product they thought they had already bought. Goodell did that on purpose, no doubt about it in my mind.

hitta

It cracks me up that every time someone questions the legitimacy of something everyone bandwagons with that source without actually questioning the source that they are bandwagging onto. When someone questions the source they are like "OMGZ you have a tinfoil hat", but they somehow act as if it is different to question the target of that source, as if that source is too high up to actually be fallible.

There's like this dynamic that is present. Like if the Saints, or some football team would accuse an individual of doing something wrong... theres no way that the Saints would lie about that because the Saints would be higher up on the food chain than them, but somehow the Saints are guilty of bounty gate just because the NFL accused them.

In the end, that just shows the sheepish nature of people, and their fear to actually ask for facts; which is what pisses me off about the whole bounty gate issue overall.

Rugby Saint II

Most people are sheep...............

sharke

bah

saintfan