Without a doubt, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was justified in handing down a harsh suspension of New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton and former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams. Saints fans may not like it, but in a matter of safety, Goodell sent the right message to the league.
The Saints defense was recently found to have employed a bounty system for injuring players from other teams. Basically, defensive players received extra cash if they took a specified opposing player out of the game via injury.
Since the scandal came to light, Goodell suspended Payton for all of next season and suspended Williams indefinitely. He’s also fined the Saints half a million dollars and suspended Saints general manager Mickey Loomis for the first eight regular-season games.
Harsh as it may be, it needed to be done. Football is a rough game and injuries will happen, but the bounty system is sick. There is no place in football for intentionally trying to hurt someone.
Don’t misunderstand, football should be hard-hitting and the game could use a bit more of it. Recently the NFL has been working on safety issues by implementing rules that have gone a bit too far, like the defenseless receiver rule. Football is a contact game and should always remain so, but what the Saints did took things too far.
Payton, Williams and the rest of the Saints organization deserve what they got. It’s a strange because Payton has, by all accounts, been seen as an upstanding guy. But any coach who knowingly lets this type of thing happen should be punished. Goodell’s punishment is harsh, but it’s exactly the message that needed to be sent. It shows that he and the league are serious about this safety issue.
Dave Ruthenberg, the sports editor of The News and Eagle of Enid, Okla., agreed Goodell’s punishment was the right move.
“Goodell’s decisive action in responding to the shameful pay-to-inflict-pain (or worse) system that was exposed was the exact measure needed to maintain credibility of the league for its fans, its sponsors and the future safety of its own players,” Ruthenberg said.
For the NFL, this is the first punishment of its kind. Payton is the first coach in NFL history to be suspended.
Payton and the Saints were stupid, and as Bill Dwyre of the Los Angeles Times said, their actions were not fair to fans.
“The New Orleans fans deserve better. Not from Goodell, from their team, for whom they spent their hard-earned money in an area still reeling from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and for whom their worship found new heights only possible in a crippled city craving distraction and heroes,” Dwyre said.
Goodell may not be everybody’s favorite guy, but he did the right thing. Rewarding people for injuring another player is serious. This punishment should deter other teams from using a bounty system.
Kevin Bingaman can be reached at [email protected]