In a grievance hearing yesterday regarding the players suspended in the Saints bounty scandal, the NFLPA maintained that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell "couldn't discipline the four suspended players for actions that occurred before the existing collective bargaining agreement was struck in August," according to sources cited by Jarrett Bell of USA TODAY. Sources said that Packers DT Anthony Hargrove and Browns LB Scott Fujita "appeared at the hearing, but neither Goodell, nor the league's top attorneys, Jeff Pash and Adolpho Birch, were present." Arbitrator Shyam Das "did not indicate when he will rule" (USA TODAY, 5/17). NFL outside counsel Dan Nash argued the league's position, and NFLPA outside counsel Jeffrey Kessler spoke for the union (AP, 5/16).
POTENTIALLY AWKWARD: ESPN’s Trey Wingo said, “The Super Bowl will be in New Orleans this year and Roger Goodell will be there, quite often and visible." He added, "If the Saints manage to ride through this and make it there, it will be the most interesting Super Bowl week perhaps in the history of that game” (“NFL Live,” ESPN, 5/16).
A BIGGER ISSUE? In Pittsburgh, Joe Starkey writes, "No one, not even the great and powerful Roger Goodell, is going to alter football’s essential nature." Goodell can "puff his chest and wave his magic wand all he likes." It is "all window dressing." Common sense "says the real issue is football itself, and that a way to mitigate potential brain damage is to play a whole lot less of it. Fewer games, and by extension, fewer practices." The NFL and the NFLPA "sanely reduced the allowable number of contact practices and offseason workouts in its latest CBA, but nobody has mentioned fewer games." It is still "hard to believe adding two was even a discussion point, since shelved but not dead." Starkey: "Bountygate is nothing compared to 18 games, a borderline criminal concept" (Pittsburgh TRIBUNE-REVIEW, 5/17).
