Intermarkets' Privacy Policy
Support


Donate to Ace of Spades HQ!



Recent Entries
Absent Friends
Bandersnatch 2024
GnuBreed 2024
Captain Hate 2023
moon_over_vermont 2023
westminsterdogshow 2023
Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022
Dave In Texas 2022
Jesse in D.C. 2022
OregonMuse 2022
redc1c4 2021
Tami 2021
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published. Contact OrangeEnt for info:
maildrop62 at proton dot me
Cutting The Cord And Email Security
Moron Meet-Ups






















« Alan Grayson Runs Red Light, Hits Bus, En Route To Campaign Event | Main | Leftist Idiot, Eleanor Clift "I Work for a One Dollar Company", Perfectly Ok With Iran Having Nukes »
March 11, 2012

BountyGate (tmi3rd)

So NFL free agency begins on Monday, and it’s already been a dramatic offseason as free agency goes. Peyton Manning is on the market, the Saints are struggling with a monster contract for Drew Brees while trying to re-sign core free agents, the Redskins mortgaged the farm to draft Robert Griffin III, and so forth.

So, as a Saints fan (in case you missed it), let me throw my opinion out there about the Saints and the program they had in place where players were paid to injure other players: They broke the rules, they were told to stop, they kept breaking the rules, they got caught, and they have to pay the price for that.

Now to the fine print…


Redskins.jpg


First of all, we’ll find out as early as Monday what the punishment is, as far as I know. It’s likely to be a significant fine as well as loss of draft picks, and the possibility exists that Saints general manager Mickey Loomis and Saints head coach Sean Payton will be suspended (the length of any suspension is the subject of much debate). MLB Jonathan Vilma allegedly contributed $10K to a bounty on then-Vikings QB Brett Favre, and if true, it would not come as any surprise if he were suspended for as many as eight games. Many have called for the firing of Loomis and Payton, but Saints owner Tom Benson has indicated this will not be the outcome. Benson is reportedly pretty angry about this, as this has squandered a great deal of the goodwill the Saints had gained after Hurricane Katrina, and Loomis and Payton will be on very short leashes after this.

22 of 27 Saints defenders were implicated in this program, including LB Scott Fujita, DT Anthony Hargrove, and DE Bobby McCray (these players are no longer with the team). There is some discussion of trying to suspend essentially everyone who played defense for the Saints from 2009-2011.

Finally, now-St. Louis Rams defensive coordinator Gregg Williams is in a lot of hot water over this, as indications exist that he ran similar programs in Washington, Buffalo, Jacksonville, and Tennessee. Many have called for him to be suspended for at least a year, if not banned from the league entirely. Again, when it comes down to it, the Saints deserve whatever’s coming to them. They broke the rules, and when told to stop by ownership, they ignored the directive, and have skirted a number of NFL rules administratively. It’s tough for me to watch as a Saints fan, but the rules are the rules.

Now to the reaction- we’ve seen an amazing amount of yellow journalism from this. ESPN’s Grantland.com has an article by Charles Pierce (who writes for NPR) that has all sorts of rending of garments about how America as a culture is moving away from the NFL (and tries to link all this to concussions)… Howard Bryant over at ESPN writes about how the NFL is out of step with society’s standards in the US… and I won’t justify Jason Whitlock’s existence at Fox Sports by linking to him, but any of you familiar with Whitlock’s usual race-baiting tripe can figure it out.

My response is simple: What a load of crap.

I played football through the beginning of high school, switched to soccer for a couple of years, and wound up playing college hockey. My brother played four years of college football, and as mentioned before, we grew up playing organized football with the Mannings (to establish perspective).

There wasn’t ONE TEAM that I was on in any sport that didn’t have bounties out- spoken or unspoken- on other teams’ players.

Now, does that mean that we had an understanding to go out and try to hurt other players? Of course not- that's not something any athlete or coach that I've encountered would do- but the understanding was there that if you had the ability to put a punishing blow on another team's star player, you did so. This also assumes you'll do it within the rules.

As we learn more about concussions, I can understand more concern about injurious hits- in hockey, we have guys who are NFL-sized hitting each other at a combined speed of 60 mph on open ice. Getting hit by NFL linemen means having 400-pound guys who are astonishingly quick trying to take your head off.

But this garment-rending we’re seeing in the media witch hunt is crap. We’re coached to play to the whistle with reckless abandon in all sports. Contact sports have an inherent amount of danger; collision sports even more so. Reading these egregious articles decrying the violence inherent in the system by these COWARDS who have never played a collision sport in their lives ignore both the traditions of the sports and the appetites of the people who play and consume them. These same jerks ooh and ahh over massive hits in football and hockey, over big wrecks in NASCAR, and so forth. The notion that they would attempt to impose their cocooned guilt upon us is laughable.

Anyway, as we ramp up towards the ONT, please feel free to discuss NFL free agency, the NHL, MLS opening day, or whatever… we’ve also got a hell of a finish shaping up in the AoSHQ fantasy hockey league.

In the meantime, please enjoy this picture that DaveInTexas tells me is his mom, via Twitter...


Dave.jpg

digg this
posted by Open Blogger at 06:30 PM

| Access Comments




Recent Comments
JackStraw: "Meanwhile, President Somebody Shit My Pants is in ..."

stu-mick-o-sucks: "Sock off ..."

J.J. Sefton: "307 AOC is good as a front-maam for the radicals, ..."

Hadrian the Seventh: " [i]Adam Schiff in 2018 said pardoning a presiden ..."

Common Tater: "Today is the day (I guess ….) that Aliens ar ..."

davidt: "AOC is good as a front-maam for the radicals, as a ..."

Eromero: "254 >>what I don't get is, how does a court have p ..."

Smell the Glove: "That idiot Bowman says that the Hunter pardon isn' ..."

J.J. Sefton: "302 Adam Schiff in 2018 said pardoning a president ..."

Lizzy[/i]: ">>And those powers, to listen into phone calls & r ..."

https://www.sexcameralive.Com/html/78.html: "Nevada 2,839,099 October 7, 2014 October 9, 2014 F ..."

SMOD: "Adam Schiff in 2018 said pardoning a presidentR ..."

Recent Entries
Search


Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Top Top Tens
Greatest Hitjobs

The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon
A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates
Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny
More Margaret Cho Abuse
Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny
Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman
Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format
John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia
World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading
Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree
Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears
Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed"
Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility
Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips
They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan
Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq
Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town
When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool
What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means
Wonkette's Stand-Up Act
Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour
Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider
My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty
Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA
An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear
The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report!
Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet
The House of Love: Paul Krugman
A Michael Moore Mystery (TM)
The Dowd-O-Matic!
Liberal Consistency and Other Myths
Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias
John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate
"Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long)
The Donkey ("The Raven" parody)
Powered by
Movable Type 2.64