Saints receive their own brutal hits

The NFL’s off-season began on March 13 with an unusual headline of a team continuing to be investigated for an illegal bounty system they had in place for the past three years.

The New Orleans Saints who had been operating a bounty system in which players were awarded money for injuring or knocking opposing players out of games, today took their own big hits.

New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton has been
suspended for the entire 2012 NFL season.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announced this morning that Saints head coach Sean Payton will be suspended for the entirety of the 2012 season. Payton’s role in this was obviously huge for him being such an attention to detail coach he was aware of the bounty system and did nothing to stop it. Further, he lied to investigators originally when asked if there was a system in place.

Being a football-lifer that Payton is, clearly he is taking a major hit emotionally but that’s not the only place the 2009 Super Bowl champion coach will be hit. Just check his pockets, Payton with the one-year suspension will be missing $7.5 million that he was set to make.

And that wasn’t the only repercussion for this illegal, violent, and unethical system. Goodell has suspended St. Louis Rams defensive coordinator Gregg Williams indefinitely, Williams had worked for the Saints for the past three seasons and was an integral part of the bounty system. He encouraged players to make dirty hits and played a role in the incentives for the violence.

Then there is Saints general manager Mickey Loomis of whom it was learned through investigation was asked originally by Saints owner Tom Benson to get rid of the bounty system and he refused to. Loomis will serve an eight-game suspension which of course is like all others, without pay. Lastly, the Saints will forfeit two draft picks, a second round pick this year and another second round pick in the 2013 draft.

This is a rough day for the city of New Orleans. Perhaps no team means more to a city in America and in any sport than the Saints do to New Orleans. The Saints played a major role in lifting spirits within the people of the city following Hurricane Katrina in both helping rebuild homes that had been struck down by the storm ad providing the fans with some memorable seasons.

In 2006, a year after the violent hurricane, the Saints were finally able to go back to its home stadium that was used to shelter survivors in the aftermath of the storm. The Saints provided one of the most memorable seasons that any one can remember. A team that was expected to do nothing ended up in the National Football Conference championship game falling just one game short of the Super Bowl. Three years later the Saints were back at it with another magical run, this time resulting in a Super Bowl championship for the city of New Orleans.

Unfortunately, we now know the Saints weren’t playing clean football in accomplishing the feat in 2009. The most classic example from that season was a case prior to the 2009 NFC title game. It is reported that Saints middle linebacker Jonathan Vilma put $10,000 on a table telling his fellow teammates the player to knockout then Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre from the game would receive the money.

To make matters worse the city of New Orleans is scheduled to host the Super Bowl next February; Saints fans are hoping that their team can become the first team to ever play a Super Bowl game in its home stadium. That task just got far more difficult.

With football already being a such a physical and violent sport, hearing these stories makes one want to cringe. Today was the first step back towards making the Saints pay for their sins; their immoral acts. And if you think Goodell stepped out of his boundaries with today’s suspensions wait until he soon announces the repercussions that Vilma and his fellow teammates involved in this mess will receive. Stay tuned.

New Orleans Saints face steep fines from Bounty-Gate

Football is a physical, tough, bloody, and grueling sport. Within the National Football League players play to win games; playing the game at its highest level possible with their utmost effort.

Incentives (or a bounty system) are also part of the sport as players and coaches can be awarded money for winning games, making playoff appearances, scoring touchdowns, or gaining yards.

Then there are the New Orleans Saints. As the story broke last Friday, the Saints for the last three seasons have had a bounty system in place in which a player will receive monetary rewards for injuring and knocking players on the opposing team out of the game.

Between the team’s then defensive coordinator Gregg Williams and many, potentially upwards of 20 defensive players the Saints have used this system to help motivate players to play overly physical and even dirty to make money and win games.

While it is very possible the Saints are not the lone team with such a system, they are the only team to be caught doing these ethically wrong acts on the football field.

In fact it was in the 2009 NFC (National Football Conference) Championship game between the Saints and the Minnesota Vikings that my dad was upset during the game with the Saints defenders. He felt like they were taking cheap-shot hits on then Vikings quarterback Brett Favre for the sole purpose to hurt him and knock him out of the game.

Then Vikings quarterback Brett Favre was
a main target in the Saints bounty system
during the 2009 NFC Championship game.

As it turns out, last Friday it was reported that in the week leading up to that game, Saints middle linebacker Jonathan Vilma put $10,000 on a table and told his fellow defensive teammates that the player to knock Favre out of the game will receive this money.

What the Saints have done is unprecedented. It has never been seen or heard of before that in the game of football, albeit a sport in which players hit each other as hard as they can, that the intent behind the hit was simply to hurt another individual.

The code of the game is to hit each other as hard or violent as one can as long as the hits are clean and legal rather than cheap and dirty, and for the intent behind these hits to be helping the team win.

As long as an individual plays the game within the guidelines and with the right morals if an opponent gets hurt so be it, it’s part of the game.

But to purposely take the field with the intent to injure other players whether it be a concussion or a broken leg is simply not right.

Above playing for a particular team in the NFL, the league is a union and a brotherhood. Players families depend on the men who play this brutal game to support them. Injuring a player does more damage than just to that specific individual, it emotionally hurts his loved ones and takes a steep hit on one’s pocket book’s for the NFL is a league in which minimal money is guaranteed if a player is unable to suit up and play.

What the Saints have done may have captured them the 2009 Lombardi’s Trophy but they will have to pay for their actions with steep fines, suspensions, and forfeiting of draft picks like never seen before.