7:03PM EST October 9. 2012 – Roger Goodell budged — but just a bit.
The NFL Commissioner re-issued penalties Tuesday for the four players disciplined in the New Orleans Saints bounty scandal, and after a series of appeals, questions about the league’s evidence and a pending defamation suit brought forward by Jonathan Vilma, the punishment stemming from the pay-to-injure program has been tweaked.
For now.
Vilma, the New Orleans Saints linebacker who would have been eligible to return from the physically-unable-to-perform list this week, is still essentially suspended for the season.
But he gets to keep the six game checks due for his time on the PUP list.
Scott Fujita, now a Cleveland Browns linebacker, is suspended for one game after originally being docked for three games.
Anthony Hargrove, a defensive tackle without a team, had his suspension reduced by a game to seven gamers, but receives credit for time served during the five weeks he has been a free agent. If he is re-signed by a team, he must miss two games.
The four-game suspension for Saints defensive end Will Smith is unchanged.
Goodell was ordered to reconsider the punishment after a three-member panel of judges, hearing an appeal by the NFL Players Association (NFLPA), temporarily lifted the suspensions on Sept. 7, but affirmed the Commissioner’s authority to discipline players for “conduct detrimental to the game.”
Before reaching his decision, Goodell met with each of the disciplined players within the past two weeks. Such meetings never occurred before the original punishment was announced in May, with the league contending that the players refused to cooperate and the players charging that the league’s investigation and process was faulty.
“The quality, specificity and scope of the evidence supporting the findings of conduct detrimental are far greater and more extensive than ordinarily available in such cases,” Goodell wrote in a memo the NFL clubs.
“In my recent meetings with the players and their counsel, the players addressed the allegations and had an opportunity to tell their side of the story. In those meetings, the players confirmed many of the key facts disclosed in our investigation, most particularly that the program offered cash rewards for ‘cart-offs,’ that players were encouraged to ‘crank up the John Deere tractor’ and have their opponents carted off the field, and that rewards were offered and paid for plays that resulted in opposing players having to leave the field of play.”
What now?
The players can appeal the discipline again to Goodell or pursue more court action, including a federal case that the NFLPA filed on behalf of the three players separate from Vilma. And it’s still unclear whether Vilma will revise the legal strategy that resulted in his defamation case against Goodell.
Vilma’s attorney, Peter Ginsberg, did not immediately return calls from USA TODAY Sports.
The NFLPA indicated that it hardly sees the issue as closed.
“For more than six months, the NFL has ignored the facts, abused the process outlined in our collective bargaining agreement and failed to produce evidence that the players intended to injure anyone, ever,” the NFLPA said in a statement. “The only evidence that exists is the League’s gross violation of fair due process, transparency and impartiality during this process. Truth and fairness have been the casualties of the league’s refusal to admit that it might have made a mistake.
“We will review this decision thoroughly and review all options to protect our players’ rights with vigilance.”
Penalties for the non-players suspended because of the scandal — Saints coach Sean Payton, general manager Mickey Loomis and assistant head coach Joe Vitt, and St. Louis Rams defensive coordinator Gregg Williams — were unchanged.
Williams, the former Saints defensive coordinator who admitted to the league that he hatched the pay-to-injure program, is suspended indefinitely.
The league also obtained a statement from Mike Cerullo, a former Saints coaching assistant, that maintains the existence of a bounty program.
Payton is suspended for the season, Loomis was banned for eight games and Vitt is in the midst of a six-game suspension.
As for the players, Goodell outlined the basis of his decisions for the reconsidered punishment in individual letters to the accused, which were also released in part to the media.
In Fujita’s case, Goodell acknowledged that the league found no evidence that he contributed money to the bounty pool, but added “there is no serious question that you were aware of the pool and its elements.”
Goodell also expressed disappointment that Fujita, a former team captain and NFLPA representative who advocated on behalf of player safety, permitted the existence of the bounty program.
When the league announced its initial findings of the program in March, it maintained that between 22 and 27 players were involved — but ultimately disciplined just four players that it maintained had key roles.
Hargrove was punished, Goodell wrote, for misleading an NFL Security representative and obstructing the league’s investigation. Goodell said that Hargrove falsely denied the existence of the program and a pledge for payment to knock then-Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre out of the 2009 NFC Championship Game.
“I previously advised you that the ‘vast majority’ of your discipline was based on your lack of candor to the League’s investigators,” Goodell wrote to Hargrove.
Goodell said that Smith confirmed during a meeting in September that he expressed approval of the program when it was initially presented by Williams, and that he also confirmed contributing money to the pool.
In court proceedings in July, Smith and other Saints players maintained that their contributions were for a “performance pool” that included rewards for forcing opponents out of the game — “cart-offs,” in the Saints lexicon — in addition for big plays that did not involve injuries. While the players maintained there was no distinction made for rewards that resulted in injuries or not, that payments came from the same pool, the NFL sees otherwise — and that the prospect of payment for injuries is technically a bounty.
“I understand that you deny that anyone intended to inflict injury on any opposing player,” Goodell wrote to Smith. “Even in the face of repeated appeals to ‘crank up the John Deere tractor and cart the guy off,’ you and others now claim that the objective was instead merely to ‘knock the wind out’ of your opponents, requiring them to leave the game for only a play or two.
“From the standpoint of player safety, fair competition and integrity of the game, the issues with which I am concerned today, this kind of after-the-fact explanation is little more than wordplay that…offers no basis on which to excuse conduct that does not belong in professional football.”
According to the NFL, Vilma confirmed that “cart-offs” and “knockouts” were included as part of the larger pay-for-performance program. Goodell said in the letter to Vilma that Williams and Cerullo stated under oath that Vilma pledged $10,000 toward a bounty on Favre during the 2009 NFC title game.
In his letter to Vilma, Goodell wrote, “I am not persuaded by any suggestion that either Mr. Williams or Mr. Cerullo had an incentive to testify falsely, under penalty of perjury, about such conduct by you or any other player.”
With that, the NFL has stated its case again.
It would likely be fruitless for the players to appeal the new suspensions through the NFL process, with the appeals leading directly back to Goodell.
There’s a much better chance that the case is headed back to another courtroom.
Source:
http://www.ezonearticle.com/2012/10/09/nfls-goodell-alters-saints-bounty-penalties/
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