LITTLE ROCK — Who dat saying they’ll suspend the Saints?
I say sue him. Sue Roger Goodell.
Sue the NFL. Sue the guys who made all those “hardest hits” videos for the league. Sue the league whose drug-testing program is a paper tiger.
New Orleans Saints Coach Sean Payton was only doing the right thing last week by appealing his Goodell-levied suspension for bounties to injure opposing players.
It’s called due process, and you can look it up on Wikipedia. You may need it yourself one day.
Whether Payton thinks Goodell will mitigate his one-year suspension or whether he simply needs extra time to clean out his office, the commissioner’s rush to judgment needed to be slowed.
Namely, what are the parameters of Payton’s suspension? Can he watch game tapes? Can he talk to quarterback Drew Brees during the week? Can his wife have lunch with the assistant coaches’ wives?
More importantly, can the Saints hire Bill Parcells?
Be careful how you answer that question. Your allegiances may be showing.
Much of the national media has been acting as if they’re shocked to find that big, strong NFL defensive players were actually trying to knock opposing quarterbacks out of the game.
Spare us the self-righteousness. And that includes Commissioner Goodell.
You can’t have it both ways. The NFL can’t profit from violence and then hand down inflated suspensions for suspicions of it.
Knocking the other team’s quarterback out of the game has been a part of game plans and pregame speeches since Red Grange. If you don’t believe that, ask your son, the high school football player.
But this is different, the smug moralists are saying. The Saints, they say, were actually trying to hurt people.
If I’m Payton’s lawyer, I say prove it. Goodell’s own office employs officials on Sundays and deputy commissioners who look at the tapes later and fine players for excessive hits. If the NFL didn’t fine a player after this standard weekly scrutiny, how can the league measure the player’s intent months after the fact?
Equally empty are the so-called reports that suggest the Saints led the league in “violent penalties.”
Late hits and roughing-the-quarterback penalties, I always thought, are the signs of a bad defense - not one with its mind on perpetrating felonies.
And now comes the media indignation over the inspired idea of having Parcells, Payton’s treasured mentor, replace him for this season.
It likely would be Parcells’ last hurrah. Why wouldn’t he want to do it?
He would be taking over a team with a core mostly still intact from its Super Bowl victory two years ago.A team, unlike he had with the Dallas Cowboys, with a proven championship quarterback. A team where the owner stays out of the way.
The NFL is a better league when Bill Parcells is one of the coaches in it.
Yet, there were columns and blog posts last week, complaining that the Saints somehow were pulling a double-reverse on their NFL punishments. They wanted Goodell to get back to the business of handing out mass suspensions for Saints defensive players.
Oh, I see - more due process violations.
The players’ association has asked to see what “evidence” the league office has that bodies were maimed and money changed hands.
Good luck with that one, counselor. And, again, where was the NFL’s enforcement when these crippling hits allegedly were taking place?
The penalties levied against the Saints are insanely excessive. As a lawyer friend in Louisiana reminded last week, there are major industrial polluters who are found guilty and only get fined $1 million.
Payton stands to lose $5.8 million, according to reports.
So sue them, coach. Sue the league. Sue the man who levied the suspensions.
Sports, Pages 14 on 04/02/2012