NFL's new PED violation rules encourage snitching on other players
For a league that drapes itself in the American flag and lays the performative patriotism on like a beaver applying a layer of mud to its dam in a lake, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell sure seems to have a lot more in common with Josef Stalin than Dwight Eisenhower.
For starters, there’s the league’s economic system, which has a revenue sharing system and hard salary cap so rooted in economic and competitive parity that you’d think Karl Marx designed it. Unlike the NBA, it is simply not possible for an NFL team to accumulate and keep talent because the cap forces them to share in a communist economic model.
The model is so effective that Green Bay, a city of 104,000 people that is otherwise as blue-collar Rust Belt as it comes with its meatpacking plants and paper mills, fields one of the most storied franchises in the history of the sport.
And then, of course, there’s the for-show trials. What else would you call the Ezekiel Elliott saga, Deflategate, and the arbitrary punishments handed out that always seem to be upheld in a system of jurisprudence where the outcome of the trial is decided before arguments are heard?
Finally, no communist regime is complete without secret police, and that’s where the league’s new PED violation rules take center stage.
Specifically, Mike Florio of NBC Sports reported Wednesday that the league’s policy contains provisions that reward players who snitch on their colleagues with up to a 50 percent reduction in their penance for violating the substance abuse guidelines.
The smoking gun, as Florio uncovered when looking into the policy in relation to the ongoing brouhaha involving the Patriots’ Julian Edelman, is a masterstroke of pitting the union against itself.
“The NFL Management Council may, prior to the conclusion of a Player’s appeal, reduce the length of the suspension and corresponding bonus forfeiture by up to 50% when the Player has provided full and complete assistance (including hearing testimony if required) to the Management Council which results in the finding of an additional violation of the Policy by another Player, coach, trainer or other person subject to this Policy,” the policy reads.
Two key words there — “bonus forfeiture” — are the linchpin of this carrot encouraging players to go rogue against one another.
The signing bonus is one of the few fully-guaranteed parts of a football player’s contract. In a league where you’re always one injury away from losing your livelihood, that chunk of change — which is usually several million dollars — is critical to long-term financial security.
Florio points out that a player has likely never exercised this provision. After all, if he had, there’d be evidence in the form of a two-game rather than four-game suspension, along with a slew of questions why.
So far, we haven’t seen that, which makes sense. A player who snitched on a coach, trainer or fellow player would be cut faster than you can say “snitches get stitches” for including teammates in t blast radius.
Trusting the NFL to hold true to its word and not weasel out by claiming the player’s testimony didn’t count as “complete assistance” seems dubious at best.
But as sure as a Soviet citizen could stave off deportation to Siberia by playing state’s evidence, the NFL has copied the concept for its own twisted authoritarian regime.
Roger Goodell ought to consider a new motto for the NFL:
“In Soviet Russia, shield defends you.”
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