Angus
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HEY, COMMISH: MAKE TEAMS PAY
NFL MUSTN'T PUNISH ONLY PLAYERS LIKE TANK
June 26, 2007 -- YOU are NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and you are wholly sincere and defiantly adamant about cleaning up the league. Here is the best way to do it: Punish teams, not merely offending players.
Make it so that enabling and coddling are things of the past. Make it so that the Bad News Bengals, with nine players arrested in a nine-month span last year - one per month, a perfectly symmetrical criminal schedule - head into this season at a competitive disadvantage. Make it so that the Titans get hurt on the field because of what Adam "Pacman" Jones perpetrated outside those many strip clubs and make it so the Bears are weakened by the gun-toting antics of a menace named Tank Johnson - finally cut loose by Chicago yesterday.
Your guy gets convicted, your team loses a draft pick. Or how about taking that tidy and binding salary cap and reducing it by a few million spending bucks for any club that harbors athletes that bring the cops to the door?
You want head coaches to add off-field discipline to their burgeoning to-do list? Start penalizing teams and see how any scent of boys-will-be-boys is instantly deodorized.
The news yesterday was that the Bears waived the notorious Johnson three days after he was pulled over for speeding in the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert, Ariz. Johnson was arrested for "DUI Impaired to the Slightest Degree," which on the surface certainly doesn't sound terribly dastardly.
Of course, this is the same Tank Johnson - a top-notch defensive tackle - who had been suspended for the first eight games of the 2007 season after violating probation on a gun charge. Last December, police raided Johnson's suburban Chicago home and found six unregistered firearms. That was a violation of a previous gun charge. Two days after the December raid, Johnson's bodyguard, Willie B. Posey, was shot and killed while he and Johnson were at a Chicago nightclub.
Two months later, Johnson played in the Super Bowl. In March, he began a two-month jail stint. The Bears did not cut him loose - until now.
"We are upset and embarrassed by Tank's actions last week," Bears GM Jerry Angelo said in a statement. "He compromised the credibility of our organization."
Credibility is not a term NFL executives should throw around so boldly, as teams often look the other way when misconduct rears its ugly head. These are grown men, the company line intones, and while we don't condone such behavior, we can't police our players 24 hours a day. Surely that is true, but when obvious punk behavior and blatant criminal actions arise, teams wait for the legal system to run its course before adopting any sort of moral stance.
Goodell has come in with both fists clenched and in the first round of his stewardship is making a wonderful bid to become the Law and Order Commish. He appears dead-serious about the tougher player-conduct penalty he has put in motion, but jettisoning players from the league is not enough.
The vast majority of the inhabitants of an NFL locker room are hard-working professionals and law-abiding citizens. It's the bums who create the image of lawlessness that Goodell is determined to eradicate.
So, he should take the next step. Set up a sliding scale that makes it abundantly clear that teamwork doesn't end after the fourth quarter. Can you imagine the outrage in Nashville if the Titans lost a first-round draft pick because of Pacman's rap sheet? How do you think loyalists of Da Bears would react if their team, thanks to Tank, had less salary cap money to spend on free agents than everyone else? You think Bengals coach Marvin Lewis might have put the hammer down a bit sooner if his felonious bunch had lost draft picks and salary cap money for regularly turning up on police blotters?
The peer pressure to perform in a game is immense. Just imagine if some youngster on the Giants gets arrested and, after posting bail, sees an un-welcoming committee of Antonio Pierce and Jeremy Shockey demanding an explanation.
Good riddance to Pacman Jones and Tank Johnson. Goodell is on the right track, but the race is not yet won.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/06262007/sports/hey__commish__make_teams_pay_sports_paul_schwartz.htm
NFL MUSTN'T PUNISH ONLY PLAYERS LIKE TANK
June 26, 2007 -- YOU are NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and you are wholly sincere and defiantly adamant about cleaning up the league. Here is the best way to do it: Punish teams, not merely offending players.
Make it so that enabling and coddling are things of the past. Make it so that the Bad News Bengals, with nine players arrested in a nine-month span last year - one per month, a perfectly symmetrical criminal schedule - head into this season at a competitive disadvantage. Make it so that the Titans get hurt on the field because of what Adam "Pacman" Jones perpetrated outside those many strip clubs and make it so the Bears are weakened by the gun-toting antics of a menace named Tank Johnson - finally cut loose by Chicago yesterday.
Your guy gets convicted, your team loses a draft pick. Or how about taking that tidy and binding salary cap and reducing it by a few million spending bucks for any club that harbors athletes that bring the cops to the door?
You want head coaches to add off-field discipline to their burgeoning to-do list? Start penalizing teams and see how any scent of boys-will-be-boys is instantly deodorized.
The news yesterday was that the Bears waived the notorious Johnson three days after he was pulled over for speeding in the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert, Ariz. Johnson was arrested for "DUI Impaired to the Slightest Degree," which on the surface certainly doesn't sound terribly dastardly.
Of course, this is the same Tank Johnson - a top-notch defensive tackle - who had been suspended for the first eight games of the 2007 season after violating probation on a gun charge. Last December, police raided Johnson's suburban Chicago home and found six unregistered firearms. That was a violation of a previous gun charge. Two days after the December raid, Johnson's bodyguard, Willie B. Posey, was shot and killed while he and Johnson were at a Chicago nightclub.
Two months later, Johnson played in the Super Bowl. In March, he began a two-month jail stint. The Bears did not cut him loose - until now.
"We are upset and embarrassed by Tank's actions last week," Bears GM Jerry Angelo said in a statement. "He compromised the credibility of our organization."
Credibility is not a term NFL executives should throw around so boldly, as teams often look the other way when misconduct rears its ugly head. These are grown men, the company line intones, and while we don't condone such behavior, we can't police our players 24 hours a day. Surely that is true, but when obvious punk behavior and blatant criminal actions arise, teams wait for the legal system to run its course before adopting any sort of moral stance.
Goodell has come in with both fists clenched and in the first round of his stewardship is making a wonderful bid to become the Law and Order Commish. He appears dead-serious about the tougher player-conduct penalty he has put in motion, but jettisoning players from the league is not enough.
The vast majority of the inhabitants of an NFL locker room are hard-working professionals and law-abiding citizens. It's the bums who create the image of lawlessness that Goodell is determined to eradicate.
So, he should take the next step. Set up a sliding scale that makes it abundantly clear that teamwork doesn't end after the fourth quarter. Can you imagine the outrage in Nashville if the Titans lost a first-round draft pick because of Pacman's rap sheet? How do you think loyalists of Da Bears would react if their team, thanks to Tank, had less salary cap money to spend on free agents than everyone else? You think Bengals coach Marvin Lewis might have put the hammer down a bit sooner if his felonious bunch had lost draft picks and salary cap money for regularly turning up on police blotters?
The peer pressure to perform in a game is immense. Just imagine if some youngster on the Giants gets arrested and, after posting bail, sees an un-welcoming committee of Antonio Pierce and Jeremy Shockey demanding an explanation.
Good riddance to Pacman Jones and Tank Johnson. Goodell is on the right track, but the race is not yet won.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/06262007/sports/hey__commish__make_teams_pay_sports_paul_schwartz.htm
