Bob Molinaro of the Virginian-Pilot has a good column out today on the NFLPA’s weak response to the “double-secret probation” applied to Michael Vick’s hopeful return to the league.
If ever there were a reason pro football players needed to be represented by a muscular union, it’s Roger Goodell.
Unfortunately, for some of its most troubled and maligned members, the people in charge of running the National Football League Players Association seem to be spending the summer at the beach.
Goodell’s conditional, partial reinstatement of Michael Vick on Monday is the most controversial decision to come out of the commissioner’s office since the indefinite suspension of Cleveland Browns receiver Donte Stallworth last month.
Molinaro notes that, of all people, Terrell Owens makes the most sense: “I think [Vick's] done the time for what he’s done,” Owens said. “Why more punishment? It’s almost like kicking a dead horse in the ground.”
Filed under: NFLPA, Roger Goodell, personal conduct policy , Donte Stallworth, Michael Vick, Terrell Owens
One of the (several) reasons I have chosen to start this blog is that I find NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to be overly arrogant and beyond his jurisdiction in disciplining players for off-the-field infractions. The latest episode is Michael Vick. I plan to take up this episode in another post. In the meantime, I was glad to see that the new NFLPA executive director, DeMaurice Smith, has said that the commissioner’s disciplinary authority was on the table for the upcoming CBA negotiations.
But the amount of authority Goodell wields under the conduct policy — which was written with the assistance of NFL players and late union executive director Gene Upshaw — has raised concerns among players.
“That’s something that’s very important to the players that we intend to raise,” Smith said, according to the report. “You will increase the understanding of fairness if people are involved in a way that they understand why.
”If you imagined a world where our court systems were not public and people meted out justice and all you heard was what the result was, well, they might even get the decision right — but there would be a sense that it wasn’t fair because you couldn’t see why things were,” Smith said, the newspaper reported. “I think that same underlying philosophy is true here.”
Sadly, NFLPA ED Smith supposedly helped Goodell reach his decision to suspend Vick for 6 weeks and THEN reassess whether Vick can pass Goodell’s moral judgment.
Filed under: Roger Goodell , DeMaurice Smith, Michael Vick
