Saints are Sinners

[Sobatai 70]

I notice a few avatars and signatures on here referencing NFL teams, so I thought I'd start a thread on the interesting developments over the past week concerning the New Orleans Saints, who won the Superbowl a couple of years back.

In early March of this year the NFL announced that it had uncovered evidence that the New Orleans franchise had been using an illegal "bounty programme", whereby players would be paid for performances, specifically, for "hits" that took rival players out of games. The programme was funded by the players themselves, who would contribute to a pot. The whole thing was orchestrated by the team's Defensive Co-oridinator, who administered the programme and distributed the monies. Now, the NFL is, of course, a very strictly regulated organisation, with all manner of mechanisms designed to promote equality among the various teams ... there is the draft of college players, shared revenues and the salary cap. Obviously, these extra payments constituted a breach of the salary cap. The NFL is also under siege by lawyers as ex-players seek redress from the monied organisation for damage to health during their careers. Thus, a programme that promotes injuring players is also ill-timed.

Anyway, last week the NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell handed down his punishments, which were:

1..Sean Payton the Head Coach of the Saints has been suspended without pay for twelve months, starting on April Fool's Day.

2..Greg Williams the Defensive Co-ordinator of the Saints at the time (he left to assume the same role at St Louis at the end of the season) has been suspended indefinitely with immediate effect.

3..Mickey Loomis the General Manager of the Saints has been suspended for eight games (effectively half a season).

4..The Saints organisation has been fined $500,000.

5..The saints organisation has been stripped of its second round draft picks in 2012 and 2013.

As of yet no players have been sanctioned, but that is thought to be going to change this coming week after Goodell has consulted with the players' union, the NFLPA.

Goodell is often talked of as being the "most powerful man in sports" and it's hard to argue. Most professional sports in the USA are governed by commissioners, making them quasi-Stalinist organisations. And the NFL is the biggest of them all. Goodell has hammered the Saints and there is nothing that the franchise can do about it. Goodell's power is more or less absolute.