TLG
03-21-2012, 07:23 PM
The NFL wanted to make a statement with how it responded to the Saints’ bounty controversy. It needed to at least create the impression that it values player safety. It needed to show that it could come down as hard on coaches and executives as it does on wayward players. Well, today, the league’s punishments were revealed. And boy, did it come down hard.
And boy, did it pick the worst time possible to dominate news coverage.
The news is big: Saints coach Sean Payton is going to be suspended for an entire season without pay, Saints GM Mickey Loomis will be docked eight games and $500,000, Saints assistant Joe Vitt was suspended six games without pay, the Saints franchise itself was also fined $500,000 and loses two second-round draft picks, and former Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams (now with the Rams) was suspended indefinitely. Here is the NFL’s release announcing the penalties.
These penalties are massive – massive enough that they’d normally be all anyone cared about. But today, at almost the exact same time the penalties were announced, something else happened. Needless to say, the Saints news is a bit less dominant than it normally might be. It couldn’t be kept totally down – SportsCenter is talking about it as we speak – but Tebow is getting his share of the massive attention.
We wonder if the league wanted it this way. Were they okay with their Saints ruling being overshadowed? It certainly means tat the NFL is all anyone will talk about this afternoon. But we also have to think they wanted their severe punishments of the Saints to make the absolute biggest splash possible. Thanks to Tebow, they didn’t, and a bit of potential PR gold was squandered in the process.
As for whether the punishments were just: sure, it’s not a good thing that this bounty program existed. But it’s like we said when the bounty story broke: it’s football. Football’s violent. Bounty programs are a natural extension of that, and if you went around suspending every coach who knew about one, you’d probably have a lot of suspended coaches.
And while all these suspensions, fines, and lost draft picks might be an effective deterrent for bounties (and therefore might slightly decrease the incentive to hurt opponents and perhaps therefore contribute to a very, very small decrease in player risk), they won’t end violence in football. To do that, you’d have to end… football. And as the intensity and volume of the reactions to the Tebow deal show, that’s not happening.
And boy, did it pick the worst time possible to dominate news coverage.
The news is big: Saints coach Sean Payton is going to be suspended for an entire season without pay, Saints GM Mickey Loomis will be docked eight games and $500,000, Saints assistant Joe Vitt was suspended six games without pay, the Saints franchise itself was also fined $500,000 and loses two second-round draft picks, and former Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams (now with the Rams) was suspended indefinitely. Here is the NFL’s release announcing the penalties.
These penalties are massive – massive enough that they’d normally be all anyone cared about. But today, at almost the exact same time the penalties were announced, something else happened. Needless to say, the Saints news is a bit less dominant than it normally might be. It couldn’t be kept totally down – SportsCenter is talking about it as we speak – but Tebow is getting his share of the massive attention.
We wonder if the league wanted it this way. Were they okay with their Saints ruling being overshadowed? It certainly means tat the NFL is all anyone will talk about this afternoon. But we also have to think they wanted their severe punishments of the Saints to make the absolute biggest splash possible. Thanks to Tebow, they didn’t, and a bit of potential PR gold was squandered in the process.
As for whether the punishments were just: sure, it’s not a good thing that this bounty program existed. But it’s like we said when the bounty story broke: it’s football. Football’s violent. Bounty programs are a natural extension of that, and if you went around suspending every coach who knew about one, you’d probably have a lot of suspended coaches.
And while all these suspensions, fines, and lost draft picks might be an effective deterrent for bounties (and therefore might slightly decrease the incentive to hurt opponents and perhaps therefore contribute to a very, very small decrease in player risk), they won’t end violence in football. To do that, you’d have to end… football. And as the intensity and volume of the reactions to the Tebow deal show, that’s not happening.