God and Country
by PHIL JONES
At least one team in the NFL, the New Orleans Saints, has paid its players “bounties” to deliberately injure players on the opposing team. There is no doubt of this. Greg Williams, defensive coordinator for the Saints, and later the Washington Redskins, has openly admitted it, and apologized. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell will probably levy stiff fines. All that is well and good, but nowhere near enough.
This is not merely an on-the-field issue. Deliberately setting out to do bodily harm to another human being, or paying someone to do so, is criminal behavior, and should be prosecuted as such.
There are strong indications that this practice has not been confined to the New Orleans team. Marcellus Wiley, a former all-pro defensive end, tweeted this: “Bounty’s in the NFL are a problem now? Only issue is that it became public & now the fans know. I don’t think Goodell should discipline. U?” (sic) Damien Woody, offensive tackle for the New York Jets tweeted, “This ‘bounty’ program happens all around the league ... not suprising.” Really? When told that he had been targeted by bounties for opposing player to injure him, Bret Favre said, “That’s football.”
No disrespect to Wiley or Favre, but apparently they have taken too many blows to the head. Their comments are flat-out stupid.
Granted, football is a rough game, and accidental injuries are a risk every player takes when he steps onto the field. We all know that. But accidental injuries have never been looked upon as good, and the rules of football at all levels, and the protective equipment used, have always sought to protect against unnecessary bodily harm.
To deliberately set out to injure another player is quite another matter. If we are to accept this practice in the NFL, and call it justified in pursuit of winning and profit, then we can hardly object if it is adopted in other businesses. After all, when we get behind the wheel of our automobiles, we know there is a risk of accidental injury or even death, don’t we? So if it’s OK in the NFL to deliberately injure opposing players, it must be OK in other businesses to deliberately injure key employees. That means that your competitor can hire a professional driver, and equip him with a larger vehicle than the one you own, and pay that driver to deliberately collide with your car, or run you off the road. You could be badly injured, or even killed. By Wiley and Favre’s logic, such a matter would be subject to a fine by the industry association (if there is one), but no criminal investigation.
Is that the kind of America you want to live in? Is the pursuit of winning and the thirst for the next dollar so important that it justifies deliberately harming another human being? If that’s what America has become, then it is truly lost, and its collapse is both imminent and well-deserved.
The NFL should not be allowed to treat this matter in-house, as a purely on-the-field issue. It is criminal conspiracy to commit assault and battery. The NFL engages in interstate commerce, and this is a federal matter. The Attorney General of the United States of America should vigorously prosecute any coach or team executive who offered or paid money to any player to injure another player, and any player who accepted money for injuring an opponent.
They should go to jail, pure and simple, and the harshest sentences should go not to the player, but to the team executive, without whose inducement the player would have been far less likely to engage in this criminal behavior.
Anything short of this, and I will never watch another down of NFL football, because my viewership and yours supplies the money that creates the incentive for this criminal conduct. Thus I would become party to the crime, and I am not willing to do that, for my mere entertainment.
