FWmaker Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 Here it is: "To NFL Fans: The 2012 NFL regular season is about to begin, and it promises to be another exciting, competitive, and unpredictable year of football which NFL fans have come to expect every season. Part of our responsibility in helping teams and players prepare for each NFL season is to make sure they understand and respect league policies and rules. As always, we hold everyone, including ourselves, strictly accountable for protecting the integrity of the game, starting with the health and safety of our players. This year is no exception - bringing with it a clear, consistent, and renewed emphasis on enforcing our longstanding “bounty” prohibition. Let me be clear: there is no place for bounties in football. No exceptions. No excuses. Bounties are an affront to everything that competitive sports should represent. Everyone in the NFL is responsible for adhering to these rules and we are all accountable for protecting the safety of our players - present and future. The bounty prohibition forbids offering or accepting any reward - cash or otherwise - for on-field misconduct, plays that incentivize or result in injury to opposing players, or for performance against an opposing player, group of players, or team. The bounty prohibition not only preserves the competitive integrity of our game, but also protects player safety by removing incentives that could lead to dangerous play or unnecessary and/or intentional injury. As a league, we will ensure that the prohibition against bounties is clearly understood and consistently enforced. Period. We will aggressively protect the health, safety and long-term livelihood of our players, both on the field and off. We can preserve the fierce competition that makes football great, while simultaneously committing to the relentless pursuit of safer play. Our players do not make excuses on the field; we will not make them off the field. It is our job to protect, preserve, and promote the game of football that we all love. We want an exciting game featuring the world’s most talented football players enjoying long and successful careers. The bounty prohibition plays an instrumental role in achieving that. And we are committed to holding every team, player and owner accountable. We appreciate your interest and hope you enjoy the 2012 NFL season. Roger Goodell" This is all well and good, but what I find amusing is that this letter comes out while we have replacement officials in place. Per Goodell, "Part of our responsibility in helping teams and players prepare for each NFL season is to make sure they understand and respect league policies and rules." But evidently respect doesn't go as far in interpreting rules, enforcing them, etc. with your best officials mired in a work stoppage. "As always, we hold everyone, including ourselves, strictly accountable for protecting the integrity of the game,". This is a HUGE laugh! The integrity of the game is now compromised! "Let me be clear:...Everyone in the NFL is responsible for adhering to these rules and we are all accountable for protecting the safety of our players - present and future." Now with replacement officials, how can the NFL - er Goodell - be accountable faced with officiating plays and rules that have been put into place to ensure not only the basic rules of the game, but to ensure safety to the players that play it? What a joke. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rajncajn Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 What a load of bullCHIPS AHOY!. KMFA Roger Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Azazello1313 Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 readers digest version: "just a reminder in case you didn't get the memo: don't cheat like the saints or you'll be mah b*tch too." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rajncajn Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 A Miscarriage of Justice How can a man put his own life and the lives of others in danger, only to receive a two-game fine for the first offense? Or in Kenny Britt’s case how, after eight instances of run-ins with the law, can a DUI result in just a one-game suspension? Meanwhile players such as Scott Fujita, Will Smith, Anthony Hargrove, and Jon Vilma have received far harsher punishments for what the NFL is now essentially agreeing was a “pay for performance” scheme that rewarded players for doing what they are already paid by their teams to do. I’ve said it before, but some punishments simply don’t make sense. I understand that the NFL has to protect the integrity of the game. But would anyone in the league office or NFLPA have the guts to go on national television and tell America they believe someone getting paid extra for hard hits (or injecting steroids, etc) is truly a worse offense than putting the lives of innocent people at risk by driving drunk? If they can, then the NFL and NFLPA truly have no soul. But that may very well be the case, when you consider past precedent. In 1998 Rams defensive end Leonard Little got behind the wheel of his car with a 0.19 blood alcohol level, eventually crashing into and killing an innocent woman. He was subsequently convicted of manslaugther and suspended by the NFL for just eight games. Just eight games. Again in 2004 Little was arrested for driving intoxicated after failing three field sobriety tests and even admitting to the police that he had been drinking. Despite that he was acquitted of DUI charges and also received no punishment from the NFL. Even under Roger Goodell’s six year watch, the punishments haven’t matched the crime in my opinion. In March 2009, after killing a man while driving over the legal limit, Donte Stallworth was suspended for one full season by Goodell — the exact same punishment doled out to Jon Vilma for applying hits on the football field. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big John Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 And he thinks the replacement refs are good to the integrity of the game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tazinib1 Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 I didn't even open the email this year. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Azazello1313 Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 A Miscarriage of Justice talk about an inustice, pete rose got a lifetime ban for doing something that isn't even illegal. how is placing a few bets worse than killing someone?! in any case, clearly the saints are victims. we need to get jesse jackson on this case. or maybe gloria allred. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rajncajn Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 (edited) As much as I hate ESPN right now, this is actually an extremely well-written article about the culture of football, the mentality of it's players. It's a must-read IMO whether you agree with me about the Saints punishments or not. Neither saint nor sinner ON MARCH 1, SCOTT FUJITA STOOD IN A DARK and still hospital room in Monterey, Calif., feeling very much like a man in full. As his wife, Jaclyn, and newborn daughter, Marlowe, slept peacefully, Fujita's mind wandered back over a football career that began 14 years earlier at Cal, up the coast from his hometown of Oxnard, Calif. With an intensity and commitment coaches would later compare to Pat Tillman's, Fujita willed himself into becoming a Pac-10 standout at linebacker while earning a master's degree in education from Berkeley. In 2009, he not only won the Super Bowl with the Saints but was recognized as the team's man of the year for all of his charitable work. Fujita's peers held him in such high regard that the following season, he was named to the NFLPA's executive committee. In that role, he helped negotiate the current collective bargaining agreement and became a leading advocate for player safety. THIS HAS BEEN one of the most tumultuous and important offseasons in NFL history. For Fujita, the moral conflict and utter confusion that defines the league in the concussion-crisis era first hit him in that sleepy hospital room. Looking down at his chubby-cheeked baby, his third daughter, he knew exactly what was at stake. When she Googles my name someday, what will come up? For a decade, Fujita had been perceived as a pro's pro. But with his connection to Bountygate, millions of fans are left to wonder if maybe he isn't such a good guy after all. "That thought has eaten away at me," he says. "And it turned every day this offseason into an emotional roller coaster." "Football has branded me," he begins. "This mentality to embrace and ignore the brutality of the game and be rewarded for it is ingrained in us from a very young age. When I was 9, I broke my ankle and dislocated a finger playing football, and I remember my dad saying, 'Don't worry, you'll live.' My godfather, a man I love and respect, was my high school football coach. I got stingers all the time in my neck. I made a tackle and could barely move, the pain was so paralyzing. When I tried to run off the field, he waved me back on. 'Be a Spartan, Scotty!' he yelled."When I got to the NFL, for the first time I was coached to use my head as a weapon. We were told over and over 'to get off a block, you thump a guard, spear him in the chin with the top of your helmet, separate, disengage and go make the tackle.' Well, using your head that way works. It really is the most efficient way to take on a blocker. "So now you've been in the league a couple years. You love the game and love your life, but you start to wonder, Is that good for me? And quietly, you try to be less violent and not use the crown of your head so much. Only now you're not as effective. And you know it, and the huge balancing act begins. Do I want to protect my brain? Or do I want to make 15 tackles a game and keep my job? Because right behind you on the depth chart is a 22-year-old kid who is more than happy to come down the field full speed and stroke that guard right in the chest with the crown of his head, over and over and over again. Only he doesn't have a wife and three kids. He hasn't seen friends from football suffer and die. "If we want to talk about really changing the culture of the game and the game evolving, that right there is what we should be focused on." Edited August 31, 2012 by rajncajn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HowboutthemCowboys Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 talk about an inustice, pete rose got a lifetime ban for doing something that isn't even illegal. how is placing a few bets worse than killing someone?! in any case, clearly the saints are victims. we need to get jesse jackson on this case. or maybe gloria allred. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevegrab Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 BFD. As far as the officials, should they just pay whatever the officials want for integrity of the game, or safety of the players. I want the regular officials back, but am fine with the owners doing the negotiating, after all they're paying the bills. As far as the Saints and the whole bounty bit, please enough of that, let's just start the frigging NFL season and move on. Dragging this out with more court battles (and free Payton campaigns) just detracts from the games. I am ready for the NFL season, and tired of all the off season drama. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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