I'm putting this in General Conspiracies instead of Sports because this is a little bigger than just the game of football, and it does involve a few
conspiracies.
For those who don't follow American football, this is a breakdown of what happened earlier this year concerning the previous football season.
Actually 3 seasons. Certain players of the New Orleans Saints were accused of being a part of a "bounty" program. One conspiracy. Basically being
accused of getting paid money on the side to injure opponents. Namely quarterbacks. The coach, Sean Peyton, was also accused and him, along with the
players and certain other members of the staff, were suspended indefinitely until the outcome of the investigation. Well, the investigation is over
and this is what has been determined.
The players initially accused of the "pay for pain" scheme were exonerated. The NFL Commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, could not prove that that was
indeed the case. What he did determine however was that coach Peyton along with other senior members of the Saints', staff, willingly did two things:
Create an environment within the Saints organization that was detrimental to the integrity and public perception of the sport, AND conspired to make
Tagliabue's investigation hard, if not impossible, to finish unbiased. ( 2nd and 3rd conspiracies)
In short, the man responsible for the way the NFL operates sided with the little guy, the players, and held accountable the ones at the top of the
Saints organization. The one's who did the conspiring to get away with doing something wrong that ultimately tainted the image of professional
football. What they did might not have been determined to be illegal, but it was detrimental to the integrity of the league and, as a result,
detrimental to their cash flow.
People at the very top of other businesses and corporations around the country should take note of what just happened here.The NFL is a multi-billion
dollar business with a lot of money and integrity at stake. Forget for a moment that it's a sport. The bottom line is that's it's a business
enterprise. And very powerful one.What Mr. Tagliabue did with his ruling was put the integrity first, and the money second. He could've done what
most other people in charge would do and put the money and their cronies first. (Gotta keep those golf outings un-awkward right?) But he didn't. He
put the integrity of his organization first because, ultimately, that's what keeps the money coming in. And there's a lot of it.
The Saints are just 1 team out of 32 but what their coach did, by letting this drag on for as long as it did by not admitting to begin with that what
he did was wrong, left a black eye on the entire league. He could've stopped this train rolling a long time ago, but by sticking to his guns that he
didn't do anything wrong, when in fact he did by creating an environment within his team that doesn't reflect well with the NFL as a whole, he
brought down a lot of people with him. This ruling will make sure that the "black eye perception" that people now have of the NFL will go away, but
the fact remains that the Saints are going to finish below .500 for the first time in recent memory , they lost money on the season, and their coach
Sean Peyton, who IS a good coach as far as understanding how the game is played, may very well never work in the NFL again. The Saints paid big time
for this, the blame goes to the coach and Tagliabue's decision reflects that.
I know a lot of people here have the view that people at the top all are all bad. That they don't look after the little guy. I just thought I'd
share this as an example that sometimes the people at the very top of businesses and organizations CAN make unbiased decisions that don't put money
at the top of the list. Some of them can look past
who is doing something wrong for the sake of
fixing what is wrong.
Report
"Vacates All Discipline"