Keeping up with the Saints’ bounty scandal has become more confusing than keeping up with the Kardashians.
It’s a headache that the NFL and Commissioner Roger Goodell never expected on May 3 when the suspensions were handed down.
At first, it looked like Goodell and his cronies had everything figured out. They had a boatload of evidence against the participants and they were going to strike down punishments against them with the power of Thor’s hammer.
Not so much.
What once looked like a full-on indictment against the four players who supposedly intended to hurt opponents has turned into a debacle that has no signs of ending anytime soon.
“This could go on for a while, because, certainly, our players are not satisfied with some of the things that Commissioner Goodell has claimed or said,” Saints quarterback Drew Brees said on NFL Network’s “NFL AM” Oct. 11. “It seems like so much of his suspensions have been based upon speculation and rhetoric and maybe the testimony of some pretty unreliable sources, that’s the unfortunate thing.”
Unfortunate is an understatement.
All four players involved — Saints linebacker Jonathan Vilma, Saints defensive end Will Smith, Cleveland Browns linebacker Scott Fujita and free agent defensive lineman Anthony Hargrove — will never be able to repair the damage done to their reputations because of the NFL’s allegations, whether they’re found guilty or not.
It would be one thing if Goodell had an encyclopedia of concrete information that Vilma, Smith, Fujita and Hargrove intentionally went onto the football field with the mindset to break an opposing player’s clavicle. But they don’t.
Sure, evidence of a pay-for-play system within the Saints’ organization has been presented, but nowhere in the pages does it have anything about defensive players trying to put guys like former Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre in the hospital.
After a three-member appeal panel lifted the suspensions of the players involved in the bounty scandal on Sept. 7, Goodell, not surprisingly, reaffirmed Smith and Vilma’s suspensions while reducing Fujita’s to one game and Hargrove’s to seven.
Now, Vilma has taken the matter to federal court again. This time, he’s asking federal judge Ginger Berrigen to appoint a neutral arbitrator so Goodell won’t have anything to do with the bounty scandal from here on out.
It’s become an “anything you can do, I can do better” game between Goodell and Vilma, and I’m sick of hearing about it.
What already looks like a complete mess is only going to get stickier in the coming weeks.
If Vilma is successful in his appeal and comes off the physically unable to perform list in time to play when the Saints take on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday, what can Goodell do?
A situation that was completely in the hands of the NFL might now shift to the courts. And that’s bad news for the NFL.
The main reason Goodell had to set such a steep precedent for the Saints was because of all the concussion lawsuits from former players against the NFL. Something had to be done to make it look like the NFL was doing everything in its power to improve player safety.
But all the suspensions really did was cause Vilma and the rest of his players to bash the NFL openly in the media and appeal to accusations they believe to be untrue.
And you can’t blame them.
Until the NFL comes out with some facts that implicate the players involved, the back-and-forth banter will not stop.
Allowing Vilma to be put on the PUP list allowed him to collect game checks, but if he goes back to serving his suspension next week, that’s money out of his pocket.
Vilma’s determination to be vindicated and Goodell’s refusal to admit he’s wrong is a mixture for a long, drawn-out process that will only end when one side folds.
Don’t expect that to happen in the near future.
