LET'S PUT A BOUNTY ON GOODELL.

1633

The punishment hasn't fit the crime so incongruently since Galileo exposed the universe the way it really operated.



2012

Coach Sean Payton, standing before Grand Inquisitor Goodell, having lost his job for a year now stands to lose upwards of $8 million dollars.

The team, the best in the NFL, obliterating several longstanding NFL records this year, who could only lose to themselves (588 turnovers vs. a scrappy San Francisco in the NFC Championship) now finds themselves stripped of their head coach for the year, GM and linebackers coach for half the year, their second round draft picks for the next two years...and the firing squad may just unload a 21-gun "salute" at the defense).

Seems pretty arbitrary doesn't it?  Know why it's unprecedented?  That's right.  Because there's no precedent.  

Only arbitrary punishments can be inflicted by someone with absolute power.

Journalist Tim Kowlishaw, in shock, says the penalties the NFL imposed on the Saints go beyond severe.

Dave Zirin, a columnist who says he is "shock-raged" about the over-the-top crippling of the Saints put's Goodell's sanctimony in a clear perspective:

"...But this fails the most basic of smell tests. If Goodell cared about player safety, he wouldn’t be pushing for an eighteen-game season. He wouldn’t have spent last off-season fighting the NFL Players Association on expanding health benefits or limiting “voluntary” off-season workouts. He wouldn’t be promoting Thursday-night games, which will accelerate injuries by giving players a shorter week to heal."

By the end of his column, Zirin encourages Saints season ticket holders, like me, to sue the NFL. 

And it's not as if Sean Payton can just take his talents elsewhere this year and coach in the competing AFL this year...he can't.  The NFL is a monopoly.  In a way it's all the Saint's fault. 

BFF!  OMG!  LOL!  XOXOXO!

Back in 1966, Louisiana wanted a professional football franchise.  Badly.  The NFL and AFL wanted anti trust merger exemption (read: monopoly).  Pete Rozelle winked at his friends in high places. Super-powerful Louisiana Senator Hale Boggs attached the NFL-AFL antitrust exeption rider onto a bill in fellow Louisiana Senator Russel Long's Senate Finance Committee (of which he was...the Chairman).  This kept the anti-merger bill out of the hands of voracious anti-trust Senator Emanuel Cellar of New York, chaiman of the Congressional Subcommittee of Anti-trust, where the matter deserved to be heard.

The NFL was suddenly blessed with a monopoly.

Only eleven days later, the state of Louisiana was granted an NFL franchise.  Suprise!  That's the way the universe works.

And in doing so helped to create an all powerful football Pope to which they would be subject.  Sometimes very much to their benefit (2006) sometimes to their apparant destruction (2012).

Remember in 2006 when Saints owner Tom Benson confused his actual liberties of private ownership of an NFL team with someone who actully owned something real -- something you had a say so in -- confused the New Orleans Saints with someone like Terrell Owens, who just moves around whenever he wants to?  When post-Katrina he wanted to high tail it to San Antonio, TX?  The San Antonio Saints?  Well he was told by the NFL that, no, the New Orleans Saints were not a "free agent" to move about as they wished.  They were staying put.  Case closed.  I'm sure Benson was seated down and explained the situation. 

"Look, Tom, we can't lose viewership in the entire Gulf Coast region.  That's a lot of money.  we've already gotten a black eye with that whole Art Modell moving the Browns to Baltimore overnight stunt, and we can't have that again...Look, we're running an illegal monopoly, and we're trying to APPEAR ethical and full of all the American virtues they teach in school...But since we're all friends here, let's work something out.  So how about if the NFL kicks in $15 million, and help with having our friends at FEMA kick in $115 million to repair your stadium at a record pace.  So you take this money, STFU, stay put, and we'll get you back in business, maybe even with a good team.  How about we whisper to the Houston Texans to pass on Reggie Bush with the first pick as a personal favor?  He's the kind of guy that sells tickets. We did give Houston the Superbowl just a few years ago and they owe us a favor or two.

For those of you who think Dallas is "America's Team," think again.  FEMA paid the Superdome and the Saints huge amounts of money to stay put.  I'll let those of you who are Atlanta Falcons fans take a little time to absorb that factoid.  All of you Falcoholics have paid taxes to the New Orleans Saints so the NFL could retain the Gulf Coast market.  From the view of taxation, their your team too.  How's that ruffle your feathers?

But something happened after 2006.  The Saints didn't just get a new spit-shined multi-million dollar Superdome and become competitve.  They became really, really good.  Conspiracy theorists might argue that the NFL referees even helped the Saints beat the Vikings in the NFC championship to create a feel-good story.  And by conspiracy theorists, I guess that means ESPN analysists.  Result:  a Superbowl that had the greatest viewership worldwide out of any event -- ever.


View from :45.

If Brett Favre did take some illegal hits in that game, did the NFL turn a blind eye to it?  Looks pretty clear to me.  If the Saints were guilty in that game is there any doubt the NFL were co-conspirators?

So what's the problem?  The Saints became too good, and wouldn't go away.  And like the Patriots, they were becomming a nuisance.  With free agency, the best players gravitate towards the best teams with the best coaches and quarterbacks and avoid playing for the ugly stepsisters of the league.  Let's call this the Free Agent Law of Gravity.  Do you think this causes a problem for the NFL?  What if on top of that, your organization has mastered the art of cherry picking pure nuggets of gold from the draft seemingly year after year after year?

Back to the bounties.  If they really wanted to take someone out of the game, these gigantic monsters would have done it.  I'm 40 years old and 172 lbs soaking wet, and I bet if I were so inclined, I could run into Bret Favre's knees at my own personal full speed at the proper angle after a whistle had blown and cripple the guy.  I guarantee I could do it.  Just hit his knees directly from the side.  Did Kurt Warner get the ever living snot licked out of him?  Yep!  Were all these hits legal?  Very.

The NFL apparantly has the means and the motive in the prosecution, but they're missing something crucial.

BFF!  OMG!  LOL!  XOXOXO!

There's no body.

No one went out on a stretcher -- on a hit that was illegal in this game.  In these three inquisitioned years.

Again, give me $10.000, Jonathan Vilma, and I will show you how to destroy Bret Favre's knees when he's not looking.  

Do you remember the Tonya Harding --Nancy Kerrigan tragedy from way back in 1994?  The infamously homely and ill-proportioned Tonya Harding couldn't compete with the much more talented and relatively cute Nancy Kerrigan on the ice and had her boyfriend break her kneecap with a lead pipe.  Now THERE'S an ACTUAL COMPLETE CASE with means/motive/illegal hit/broken kneecap/body on a stretcher complete case easy to prosecute!  

The way any good bounty is SUPPOSED to work.
Nancy Kerrigan, 1994.

You mean to tell me 27 absolute physical beasts of men under the direction of a supposedly bloodthirsty defensive coach couldn't do IN THREE YEARS, IN FIFTY-FOUR GAMES, to one kneecap/ trachea/ neck/ spine what Tonya Harding's boyfriend did properly in one afternoon?  Take somebody out in a stretcher with an illegal hit?  The Saints clearly had the twenty-seven WORST HIT MEN EVER in the history of the world. 

If "300" was an action film about how three hundred Spartans slaughtered and defeated 100,000 Persians, maybe Hollywood could make a comedy called "27."

If anything, the NFL should grant the Saints an additional first round pick as their "punishment."  Maybe they can draft someone who knows how to properly send someone out in a stretcher.  Or they can hire Roger Goodell as a consultant for the other teams as to how to continually send players with concussions back into games.  Roger Goodell handing down sentences for someone violating player saftey is akin to a ku klux klansman representing someone in a Civil Rights dispute.

At it's very worst, the NFL has a case against the Saints of a conspiracy of poor behavior and locker room bravado with unwilling conspirators who really knew better and refused to actually do the truly unthinkable.  Money got passed around, tough guys talked tough, the culture inside the locker room behaved like a culture inside a locker room...but it looks like at the end of the day, the culture on the field stayed pretty damn much within the fair lines of play!  For three years!  Yes, some people took a few really hard hits.  Occasionally they looked Baltimore Ravens scary.  Your point?

Mr. Goodell, your culture of nasty, legal, viscious hits was already well grandfathered in. It would take someone with a concussion not to remember this. You can't go back and punish what you've instituted.  But I understand...you found the technicality...the money that exchanged hands as a reward. Percentage wise, for what these the world's most physically imposing helmeted millionaires on the planet make, it would be tantamount to my employer offering me a $2 Best Buy gift card to beat the crap out of one of our competitors.  I too would talk smack, and take the gift card, but I wouldn't really do it.

The commissioner of the NFL has the power to make or break a franchise.  With the New Orleans Saints, he will be the first commissioner of any sport, ever, to do both.  And all within six years.

Remember when the NFL stepped in a couple of years ago ordering T-shirt shops to stop selling "Who Dat?" shirts because they felt they "owned" the phrase "Who Dat?"  I wonder if they'll have the huevos to issue the same cease-and-desist order to local t-shirt makers who are now profitting selling "Free Sean Payton" t-shirts, with the much more honest plea that they OWN Sean Payton.  They do.  They actually own him.

And "Free beer tomorrow!"

So let's say the NFL's side of the story is true and their auto-de-fe' of Sean Payton is 100% accurate.  Is it not self-implicating enough that the NFL quietly asked the Saints after 2009 to stop it?  No penalties then.  Then quietly again after 2010?  No penalties then either.  Then finally after 2011 they step in.  Why?

Do you really think the Saints were the only ones rewarding players for "big hits" or fumble recoveries?

Do you really think Bill Belichick of the Patriots dynasty was the only one spying on another team in the NFL?

Let's put it this way.  Nobody cares if the Browns spied on the Bengals anytime in the last three decades.  Not even the Bengals.

This whole punishment is all about TWO THINGS.  The one thing Roger Goodell can control -- money, and the one thing he absolutley cannot -- lack of parity in the NFL.  I'll guarantee you the phrase "Free agency ruined the game" originated in the NFL headquarters in New York.  Free agency and the desire for winners to play on winning teams with winning coaches create superteams; eventual dynasties that generally turn off the rest of the public and their hard earned money.  Everyone wants to play pitch and catch with Brees or Brady.  And Belichick and Peyton.  The homely, ill-proportioned Tonya Hardings of the league?  Not so much...

The way the rules are written now, your Jacksonvilles and St. Louises have no chance in this league.  And it's a league that yearns ideally to fill all thirty-two markets as close to full stadium capacity as possible.  In Roger Goodells ideal make-believe universe, he has thirty-two teams all going in to the final game of the season with records right around 7-9, 8-8, and 9-7.  Maximum viewership.  Maximum ticket sales.  Maximum profit.

There's also the rumor that the NFL does not want the Saints to be in the Superbowl (hosted in New Orleans this year) because it would stand to lose a lot of money.  A lot.

If the Saints were guilty of anything they were GUILTY of not following advice from cult hero, former Louisiana governor from the 1950's Earl Long.  Earl's advice on staying out of trouble?

"Don't write down anything you can phone.  Don't phone anything you can talk.  Don't talk anything you can whisper.  Don't whisper anything you can smile.  Don't smile anything you can nod.  Don't nod anything you can wink."

Brothers Huey and Earl survived all their inquisitions.

Apparently, the NFL has enough people talking and enough information that was written down.  They don't need an actual body to prosecute, apparantly.  And it only took 50,000 documents.

And as I'm writing this...I'm thinking...surely...surely someone in the NFL front office must have heard an internal affairs report that was whispered in their own headquarters.  About how to maximize profit.

Or maybe enen talked about.

Hopefully phoned and recorded.

Ideally a clandestine financial report that was written and you have copies of on why the best bottom line for the league would be to cripple the Saints (or earlier on, the Pats).  To artificially induce some parity by sanctioning from time to time your two best teams.  One in the AFC, one in the NFC.

Did your employers in the league headquarters specifically target the Saints and Patriots, the obvious perennial juggernauts in each division to assist with creating parity in the league -- a goal which cannot be attained under the current legal system of free agency -- with it's Free Agent Law of Gravity?  Was there a goal to equilize the records of all teams as much as possible by only investigating possible dynasties...with the goal of maximizing profit for the league?

Did the NFL try to keep the Saints out of this year's Superbowl held in New Orleans because research showed the NFL would lose a boatload of money if this were to happen?

If you work in the NFL head office...let me know!  Snitch!  Give us these documents.  I want Goodell hit hard.  If your documents lead to a winning investigation against Roger Goodell should a lawsuit come about that Saints season ticket holders win, I'll kick in $1,500 to the pot.