COLUMN: Bravo, Roger Goodell, there is no room in NFL for bounty hunting
Take that New Orleans.
Roger Goodell and the NFL sent a strong message Thursday, not just to the Saints, but to the entire league. It’s about time too. Hopefully now teams and players will start to listen.
Enough with the bounties and enough with the cheap-shots.
That’s not football, that’s stupidity, and the Saints, along with Gregg Williams of the Rams, are paying a tough price for their own stupidity.
This is about more than just football. It’s about people respecting each other. It’s time these athletes and coaches have to pay for their insulting behavior and lack of integrity.
Do the recently suspended deserve every day of their suspension? Without a doubt, and maybe even more. Are the Saints the only team in the NFL to have bounties? Of course not, players and coaches have come out and said as much. Does that make it OK? Absolutely not.
Sean Payton and everyone else involved with this hideous practice should be ashamed of everything they did, or even worse, what they didn’t do to stop it.
What they did is criminal. Trying to get people injured isn’t football. Trying to end players’ games, seasons, or careers isn’t football. It’s low-life criminality. This puts Payton and company on the same level, maybe even lower, than any other type of cheater in football. At least someone who takes banned-substances is just trying to improve his own performance, instead of trying to injure players for what could be their entire career.
At the end of the day it’s a game. It’s a business too, but more than anything else it’s a game that provides fans with entertainment. It’s not worth the price of disability, injuries, or anything else that comes with illegal play.
Football players aren’t just football players; they’re fathers, husbands, sons and brothers, too. They have families to worry about and provide for.
People who play the “that’s just football” or “that’s how it’s always been” card have a big problem. Intentionally injuring someone certainly isn’t football. Paying people to ruin people’s careers certainly isn’t football. Crushing someones dreams and ruining their financial stability isn’t football.
And to those who say “that’s how it’s always been,” you are as dumb as the players doing these things. Just because things have been happening for a long time, doesn’t make them OK.
Goodell and the NFL should be commended for their continued progress in promoting player safety, even when many players and coaches don’t. Goodell is serious about this and it’s time the players and coaches start to realize that, too.
People need to stop comparing 2012 to 1964 or 1984. The players now are bigger, stronger and faster. Football isn’t what it used to be back then and it never will be. Things have changed and you have to deal with it, unless of course you want continue having hundreds and hundreds of players who have football-related problems long after their playing days are over.
The Saints are the first to pay such a heavy price and hopefully they will be the last. Bounties aren’t wanted or needed in the NFL and if they continue there is going to be a high price to pay.
Roger Goodell will make sure of that.
– Spencer Wright is a sophomore majoring in broadcast journalism. He supports Manchester United and hopes to live long enough to see the Cubs win a World Series. Send any comments to eliason.wright3@aggiemail.usu.edu