Can someone explain this entire Saints' Bounty Scandal to me?

[W_L]

I get the general issues of the bounty problem. Someone says, "If you will hurt or incapacitate this guy, I will give you cash" or something. There's taped conversations of athletes and coaches talking about stuff.

 

Now, the NFL commissioner is screaming for blood, by enforcing sanctions, and the NFLPA or NFL Player Association are asking for their own private investigation before penalties toward players..

 

Can anyone with an understanding of behind the scenes American Football explain this scandal more in-depth?. Also, what does this mean for the league in general? Will they try to neuter the sport to something like "touch" football with new rules (which would suck if they do by the way, but I get why they would do it) ?

[JamesSavik]

I'll explain it to you easy.

 

Big market Patriots screw up with Spy-gate: 0 games suspended

 

Small market Saints screw up with Bounty-gate: 77 games suspended (coaches, players and administrators combined) + $500,000 fine + no 2nd round picks for 2 years.

 

The NFL commissioners office is trying to show that it's still credible and relevant after bending over for Belichick.

[Daddydavek]

There may be more than the germ of truth in what James S. said above. However, while everyone knows American football is a violent sport, guys usually don't go out there with the intention of incapacitating someone and forcing them out of the game.....And that is what happened.

 

It is true the NFL Commish office is making an example out of the Saints with unprecedented fines and suspension in order to send the message that intentionally going out to "kill" one of your opponents is out of bounds. Was it out of proportion? Maybe. Will it get the point across. Probably. Will that have a deletorious effect on the product? Maybe.

[BlueSoxSWJ]

If you're going to include the full punishment for the bounties, though, you shouldn't mislead people by claiming that the Pats got nothing for spygate. Bill Belichick was slapped with the largest fine in league history ($500k), the Pats got hit with another $250k, and they forfeited a first round pick. Also keep in mind that, at the time, only one assistant coach had ever been suspended in the history of the league, and no head coaches. (The one coach was automatically suspended under the performance enhancing drug policy, which for some reason includes coaches and staff in addition to players.) The spygate punishment was the harshest sentence ever handed out by the league to a coach and team at the time, and is still one of the harshest, with only two more assistant coaches having been suspended by the league since. (The Jets coach who tripped an opposing player from the sideline was suspended indefinitely by the team and resigned, or there'd probably be three on that list now.)

 

Implying that the punishments should be equal is also disingenuous. If I record someone's actions in a public setting outside of a football stadium, it might be a little creepy. If I offer cash bounties for going out and injuring people outside of a football stadium, I'd probably wind up in jail.

 

It's not big market versus small market. It's that no one is suing the NFL for videotaping that went a bit too far.

 

Contrast that with players struggling to go about every day tasks because of head injuries, a rash of suicides (apparently including Seau's), and a growing number of lawsuits alleging that the NFL has known for years about the growing concussion and CTE problem, but hasn't taken serious action for fear of making the game less entertaining, and thus making less money. And if you think that case is a stretch, consider that even as the NFL claims to be taking player safety seriously, the owners pushed until the last minute for an expanded 18-game regular season during the lockout.

 

When there's as much money on the table as there is with professional football, the answer is almost always as simple as "follow the money."

[PrivateTim]

Football at every level rewards and encourages hard hits or "sticks" as they are called. In Pop Warner and high school a lot of teams award decals to put on your helmet, I knew guys on the football team in high school who had a pool every week for the best hit. In college I knew Deltha O'Neal who was as hard hitting a cornerback as there was in the country that year and we were talking about this topic kind of. He had just leveled a receiver the last game and the guy was down for a good time and Deltha talked about he badly he felt. He said words to the effect of, "you always want to stick a guy and get him thinking about you the next time he goes for a pass and not the ball, but you never want to see him not get up". That is the difference between what happened in NO. They were not just rewarding good hits, they were not just encouraging good hits, they were encouraging and motivating hurting people deliberately to get them out of the game. That threatens the integrity of the entire game and makes many mothers wonder if they want to send their boys off to play that game or if many Cross Country isn't a better fall sport alternative.

[methodwriter85]

77 games suspended? Isn't that like 5 years or something? Damn.