Roger Goodell and his Tyrannical Power.

     Roger Goodell is considered by many to be the most powerful man in Professional Sports. He is the commissioner of the most popular sports league in North America. A league in which he yields enormous power over.

      Since 2006(When Goodell took the job as commissioner) Goodell has suspended 24 players for a total 124 games for violating the leagues player conduct policy. While I have no problems with most of the suspensions there are some that bother me. The biggest of all the suspensions and the one I have a problem with is the the "Bounty Scandal". In March the NFL released a statement saying that they had found evidence that Former Saints' Defensive Coordinator Gregg Williams had orchestrated a "Bounty" System which rewarded players for their performance. It turns out that the NFL had been investigating them for over 3 years and had warned the Saints on a couple of occasions. Not long after Goodell suspended players Jonathan Vilma(Entire Season), Anthony Hargrove(8 Games), Will Smith(4 Games) and Scott Fujita(3 Games). He also went after the management and coaching staff by suspending Head Coach Sean Payton(Entire Season),Assistant Coach Joe Vitt(6 Games), GM Mickey Loomis(8 Games) and Gregg Williams(Indefinitely). Soon after a tape of a Gregg Williams Pre-game speech was released. While it may have been a bad speech never in that tape was there ever any mentioning of money changing hand between the players mentioned. Roger Goodell never released any evidence of the players mentioned receiving money. What bothers me even more is that Goodell knew about this for THREE YEARS and not once decided to do a thing about it. This past weekend it was released that the four players who were suspended for their involveent in the case won their appeal and were eligible to play in their Sunday openers. It has also come to my attention that the NFL is being sued by thousands of former players over concussions. The plaintiffs are stating that the NFL knew about the concussions that are now affecting these players and the NFL tried to cover them up and since the Bounty scandal is a matter of player safety Goodell is trying to tie up loose ends if you will.

   

While I do think the Saints had a "Bounty Sysytem" in place(Like many other teams have had in the past) and I think the Management/Coaches suspensions were justifiable I just haven't seen enough evidence to single out these players. Goodell is using this "Bounty Scandal" as leverage and it just might work.