I haven’t kept it a secret that I don’t respect NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. I’ve written negatively about him frequently, mostly with regards to his mishandling of the Adrian Peterson case. It’s time for NFL owners to fire Goodell. If they don’t fire him, they’ll lose their credibility. It’s time for them to put their big boy pants on.
Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk.com is reporting about Goodell’s inaction earlier this season turning into a bigger deal now. Florio reported “During the Week Eight contest in Pittsburgh, Bengals linebacker Vontaze Burfict applied a hit to Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell that resulted in a season-ending knee injury. After the game, Steelers linebacker Vince Williams posted a tweet that Burfict and other Bengals players regarded as a death threat: ‘I catch Vontaze on south beach im painting that boi on sight.'”
According to Florio, “It’s possible the league didn’t do anything about the threats because the league didn’t want to turn a fairly small story into a big story.” Florio is wrong in calling the initial story “a fairly small story.” Physically threatening a player isn’t insignificant, especially when the offending player refuses to apologize:
Williams later deleted the tweet and issued a statement in which he refused to apologize for his words but also said he “shouldn’t have taken these feelings to Twitter.”
Taking the threat to Twitter isn’t the problem. Issuing death threats is the problem. Even if Williams wasn’t serious, it’s a serious matter. More importantly, Williams threat violates Goodell’s Personal Conduct Policy:
Williams’ behavior seems to constitute a violation of the plain terms of Personal Conduct Policy, which prohibits “[a]ctual or threatened physical violence against another person.”
Goodell hasn’t hesitated in talking about “protecting the shield” on matters of personal and professional integrity. The fact that Goodell applies this policy arbitrarily and inconsistently speaks volumes about Goodell’s penchant for situational integrity.
Technorati: Roger Goodell, NFL, Personal Conduct Policy, Protecting the Shield, Situational Integrity
Sean Payton is still coaching. His defensive coordinator who established and managed the bounty pool with New Orleans back when they beat up two quarterbacks in a row in playoff games is presently coaching in the league.
Each should have been banned for life, as with fixing games with gamblers. Judge Landis imposed lifetime bans after the 1919 World Series was fixed. Well before millionaire jocks became a norm.
Tweets are stupid, but coaching evil should have been treated as unacceptable from the point of disclosure onward. It was not. That was the point of ouster from the garden for the NFL.
The NFL’s slow but steady downward slide in multiple dimensions began when the Office of the Commissioner passed from proven football people to lawyers who think they’re in the same league. It’s a microcosm of American business today, where the CEO is less and less a great founding inventor, engineer, or sales professional. Instead, they have to be lawyers to cope with the government, and after a time, starting bribing the politicians that created all those regulations and taxes to win contracts or put their competitors at an often fatal disadvantage.
Rex - You left out Goldman-Sachs as part of the NFL slide.