It strikes me as hypocritical for the NFL to act aghast over its discovery the Saints had an internal system of rewarding players who inflicted big licks on opponents.

The league’s line separating a vicious personal foul from a clean and legal hit was especially blurry during the most recent postseason run.  The game’s accepted level of violence is high despite a building body of knowledge about the long term damage it does to the brains of participants.

With or without a few ten-thousand dollars exchanging hands between teammates, the goal of a pass rusher or a free safety is to put a big hurt on the guy with the ball.  The heavy hitters get big contracts.  The league office is A-OK with a Sunday afternoon full of mean-Joe-green and boom-shock-a-locka.  Yet when it stuck its nose into a little side action between teammates on the field, it got all high and mighty about it.

Seems to me the league would have been better off telling Williams, Payton and the rest of ’em to knock off incentivization of producing a carted-off opponent.  In other words, play the game of football as it has always been played but please keep this little game within the game on the down low.

It’s hard to take a prominent football pundit like Adam Schefter seriously when he says the so-called Saints bounty program is an “integrity of the game” infringement because it skirts the salary cap.  Gimme a break.

No doubt the NFL will punish the Saints severely.  What will come down from this commish will weaken the New Orleans franchise for a few years.  All the other teams that employed variations of the same kind of scheme will move on unscathed.

It’s a pure acting job for the NFL to appear upset about the Saints.  As years go by and even more is understood about what hard hits do to football players, the game itself will be the problem.  Not the games within the game.