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.<\/p>\n
The league\u2019s line separating a vicious personal foul from a clean and legal hit was especially blurry during the most recent postseason run.\u00a0 The game\u2019s accepted level of violence is high despite a building body of knowledge about the long term damage it does to the brains of participants.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 The heavy hitters get big contracts.\u00a0 The league office is A-OK with a Sunday afternoon full of mean-Joe-green and boom-shock-a-locka.\u00a0 Yet when it stuck its nose into a little side action between teammates on the field, it got all high and mighty about it.<\/p>\n
Seems to me the league would have been better off telling Williams, Payton and the rest of \u2019em to knock off incentivization of producing a carted-off opponent.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to take a prominent football pundit like Adam Schefter seriously when he says the so-called Saints bounty program is an \u201cintegrity of the game\u201d infringement because it skirts the salary cap.\u00a0 Gimme a break.<\/p>\n
No doubt the NFL will punish the Saints severely.\u00a0 What will come down from this commish will weaken the New Orleans franchise for a few years.\u00a0 All the other teams that employed variations of the same kind of scheme will move on unscathed.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a pure acting job for the NFL to appear upset about the Saints.\u00a0 As years go by and even more is understood about what hard hits do to football players, the game itself will be the problem.\u00a0 Not the games within the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u2019s line separating a vicious personal foul from a clean … Continue reading