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Mishandling of Josh Brown
A very good read. I am going to quote some profound excerpts.
A very good read. I am going to quote some profound excerpts.
During negotiations, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and the league made it clear that Article 46 was a “deal-breaker.” But that didn’t stop us from arguing that it was not only unfair to players, but dangerous for the league. I remember describing to Goodell and the owners a hypothetical situation where it was clear that a suspension of a player was in everyone’s best interest, but the question was for how long. We explained how unfair and arbitrary it would be for the players and how fraught it would be for the league to be expected to levy punishments with incomplete information. The alternative we presented would have given the players certainty and Goodell and the league the cover they desperately needed to explain the length of suspensions. But, the siren song of absolute power was too seductive, guiding Goodell and the NFL into rocky shores.
Goodell is oft maligned for this era of commissioner overreach that, in the minds of some, starts with the decisions made in the Ray Rice case. But to be fair, by then it was too late. That node of the decision tree had no strong branches because of a series of nearsighted decisions that felt right at the time. Some made by Goodell, some made by me and other leaders at the National Football Players Association (NFLPA). We overreacted during a scary time and abandoned some of our core principles. It goes back much further than Josh Brown, Greg Hardy, or Rice. It actually starts with Ron Artest and Paul Tagliabue.
In 2005, there was a sudden uptick in NFL player arrests. As a percentage, NFL player arrests were still well below the national average for men in that age range, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was perception. And the perception of the NFL was waning. And Adam “Pacman” Jones became the face of NFL criminality and waning perception. In a three-year period, he was charged with five crimes. Many of the charges were dropped. His team, the Tennessee Titans, suspended him for one game, but no suspension was issued from league office.
At the NFL combine in 2007, Goodell created the Commissioner’s Player Advisory Council. He invited me and a few other player leaders to this group. It was said that the group was to be a way to make sure that the players’ voices were being heard. That group only met a few times. Frustrated by the diminished reputation of players and showing a lack of foresight, we agreed that “something” needed to be done about “Pacman” and players like him. In April, without a conviction, Goodell suspended “Pacman” for a year. Without explicitly approving the suspension before it was announced, we validated the commissioner’s unprecedented action by not challenging it.
There has been no turning back since. Article 46 even began to be misapplied to entire teams with Bounty-gate in New Orleans and Deflategate in New England. All of these were actions taken to, as Goodall is fond of saying, “protect the shield.”
