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Does the NFL have integrity?

A stained commissioner will soon hear the appeal of a stained champion after the league hit the New England Patriots with a Lifetime Achievement Award For Cheating over a random rule none of us even knew was a rule.

Never mind that "violent bloodsport" and "integrity" don't usually have any great need to co-exist ... unless you require corporate sponsors to believe your popular product is purer than it actually is. And never mind that the two stories that engulfed the sport before this one -- Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson -- left us all wondering whether we literally had to hide the women and children.

And never mind that it is pretty hard to claim and protect integrity when one NFL owner is paying a $92 million settlement to truckers to make a federal fraud indictment vanish ... and another owner insists on keeping a racist slur as his team's nickname ... and another owner is getting arrested with a briefcase full of pills and $29,000 cash ... and another owner is allegedly being sextorted for internet photos ... and all the owners are paying a settlement of hundreds of millions to try to get their concussed former employees to go away while the current bigger-stronger-faster employees may or may not be tilting the allegedly even playing field with human growth hormone.

Regardless, commissioner Roger Goodell's campaign platform has largely been about building and protecting integrity. He is a glorified PR agent this way, making tens of millions a year, earning more by a lot since 2007 than any of the league's quarterbacks, and he does this as a shield for The Shield. He is a piñata in protecting the desires of his owners, again and again taking the beating alone as candy continues to spill all over the NFL's floor. Goodell came to fame punishing and over-punishing those who dared to stain the league's image.

That the most punitive commissioner in the history of games stained it himself, ironically enough, by handling the Rice case too leniently, ironically enough, is a testament to the dangers of appointing yourself moral authority over something inherently impure.
That his random punishment system, making up the rules as he goes, keeps negative stories in the news cycle longer than normal as we debate and await over-punishment is not great for that image and integrity he's trying so zealously to protect.

We don't do this in other sports with more uniform penalty codes and less off-field integrity policing, arguing for weeks and months what a penalty should be because we have no earthly idea what it will be. So, in the negative-news cycle at least, Goodell somehow makes the league's image worse while trying to make it better, which is awfully clumsy work by someone who has put himself in charge of public relations.

But what do you do, as a league, when you don't actually have as much integrity as you badly wish for others to believe you have? You punish and over-punish in protection of that integrity you don't have to give the illusion that you have it to protect.

So now you have a commissioner who lacks credibility hearing the appeal of a champion organization that lacks credibility. The league's independent investigator wrote 243 pages worth of incrimination to protect the integrity of its game, and the Patriots filed a lawyerly 19,600-word rebuttal to protect their integrity, and none of us still really understand empirically how much of an advantage was actually gained by breaking a random rule none of us knew was a rule. And the independent investigator then had to do a conference call to protect his independence and his 243 pages because nobody trusts anybody in this transaction. It's like watching the ending of "The Departed."

Just what you got into sports for, right? Reading. Lawyers. Chemists. PSI. Ideal Gas Law. This while Aaron Rodgers says, yeah, he liked to over-inflate footballs because, well, he wants you to know he could throw for 400 yards and four touchdowns with a beach ball.

You know when Goodell went from very popular to very unpopular? There was a tipping point. He entered to much applause as the iron-fisted emperor because America tends to love the punisher platform, but it all changed when he investigated the Saints the way he has the Patriots. Former and current players shrugged off the New Orleans bounty scandal, because that kind of thing was so common in their barbaric game, but Goodell The Outsider and Overseer had to protect an image and integrity and, with concussions in the news, player health. So he did his move. He over-punished. And all his decisions were overturned on appeal by anyone who fought them. Right then, the employees felt emboldened to trash their own commissioner publicly, and have done so since.

Which means the commissioner has, with the Saints case and the botched Rice case, as many failed investigations on his résumé as the Patriots have alleged cheating on theirs. It is fairly and literally incredible, putting him in charge of the credibility of others given his present credibility predicament. It's like seeing the courtroom judge banging a gavel while wearing an orange jumpsuit and shackles. Better to just imagine this entire Patriots "scandal" as a professional wrestling match. Brady vs. Goodell. The Golden Boy vs. The OverPunisher. A fight for the ages, a fight for INTEGRITY!

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Rugby Saint II

Isn't he supposed to uphold the NFL image? He doing a terrible job.......but oh well, the owners are making more money than ever.

NonieT

In spite of , not because of him. Just think how much more they could make if they had someone who knew what the hell he was doing.

aintasinner

My favorite part of the Goodell as Botched Enforcer reputation is the fact that he earned it, in large part, because of the way he handled Bountygate. It's nice to know that no matter how his career is judged, and from the way it's going he won't be getting any glowing kudos, he will always and forever be known for the horrible way he handled the allegations against the Saints. There will never be an article about Roger that won't mention how his predecessor had to step in and fix the Bountygate debacle for him. He wanted to be known as a tough guy? Well, he'll always be known as a bungler and an idiot instead.

hagan714

Commissioner Roger Goodell is the Stain. he needs to go

As long as the owners and commissioner Roger Goodell hold themselves to different standards than the players this will not work.

Goodell is a smart guy i know but like so many smart men before him the idea of total control has turned into an ego manic out of control.

Rogerl must go

WhoDat!656

"...and another owner insists on keeping a racist slur as his team's nickname."

RaginCajun83

well Nooo Kiddding

saintsfan1976

Ignorance is not an excuse.

darksoul35

A lot of coaches I just don't like in a sports sense not personally. Like Pete Carrol. I don't hate him as a person and there are not many people I can say I actually personally hate. Roger is definitely one of them that I do. The rate that he is going there is no way he will last. He has already turned the N.F.L into two hand touch.

SmashMouth

Could we possibly be witnessing the beginning of the end of RG?

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