Author: Jack McHenry (Sports Columnist)
The “Bounty-Gate” scandal sent shockwaves through the NFL and one of its most recently successful franchises the New Orleans Saints. The league imposed sanctions upon the Saints’ staff as General Manager Mickey Loomis received an eight game suspension, assistant defensive coordinator Joe Vitt a six game suspension, head coach Sean Payton a suspension for the entire 2012-2013 season and defensive coordinator Gregg Williams a ban from the organization all together. The issue over the scandal, however, is transcending the bounty program deployed by the Saints and is now becoming an issue of Commissioner Roger Goodell’s iron-fisted rule over the NFL.
In the wake of an NFL investigation, Goodell implemented the suspensions. Most recently, Payton and assistant defensive coordinator Joe Vitt have decided to appeal the suspension and directly challenge Goodell’s authority. Since Goodell was the one to rule on the bounty issue initially, it is unlikely that the commissioner will revoke his initial decision after hearing the appeals.
There is no doubt that the bounty system is unethical and dangerous to the safety of the players it targets. But the issue has transformed as certain members of the media are now beginning to speculate that the harsh punishment leveled on the Saints organization was ultimately due to the Saints attempt to hide the bounty program from the NFL’s initial investigation in 2010.
Whether this is true or false is not as important as realizing that Goodell enjoys having control in his job and puts his interests before those of the league.
In recent years, the issue of concussions has been at the forefront of the NFL’s agenda, as advancements in science have shown that head trauma sustained by players can lead to substantial brain damage and onset of conditions similar to Alzheimer’s disease early in life.
Under the guidance of Goodell, the league has imposed staunch penalties for violent hits, looking to protect the players from injury. However, while executing these penalties and essentially altering the way the game is played, Goodell has also pursued the option of lengthening the NFL season to 18 games, largely because of the increased revenue opportunities that would arise for playing America’s most viewed sport for another two weeks per year. Thus his claims to be concerned that the safety of players is fundamentally negated because adding two additional games per year, with athletes continually getting bigger, faster and stronger, will inevitably lead to more injuries.
The bounty scandal plaguing the Saints strikes a similar chord. The Saints cannot be the only team to have employed such a program. To think otherwise is absurd. In a recent interview with ESPN, Eagles’ quarterback Michael Vick addressed the illegal actions of the Saints saying that he felt targeted by opposing defenses every week. He believes that a bounty system in place by the Saints is either a common occurrence in the NFL, or it incentivizes his demise at the hands of opposing defenses no less than the legal motives of any other NFL defense.
While the bounty program utilized by the Saints is immoral, the culture it promotes is not uncommon in the league. Furthermore, the unprecedented suspensions leveled on the Saints now seem overzealous given that the culture that radically manifested itself in the bounty program is commonplace throughout the league. Thus, there must have been something else done by the Saints organization to prompt this wrath from Goodell. The well documented effort by the Saints to conceal the bounty program from the NFL in 2010 would be a logical candidate.
This demonstrates, in a manner that eerily parallels Goodell’s position on concussions and an 18 game season, that at the end of the day Goodell is more concerned with parties within the NFL questioning his authority than he is with the corrupted morals and the compromised safety of players posed by the bounty scandal.
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