Tags Lays the Hammer on Goodell and Other Thoughts on NFL Player Safety

The other day, Roger Goodell’s old boss Paul Tagliabue took his former protege down a few pegs when he completely overturned Goodell’s rulings on four former and current Saints players. Initially, commissioner Goodell suspended Jonathan Vilma for the entire season, Will Smith for four games, Scott Fujita (now with the Browns) for three games and Anthony Hargrove (a free agent) for eight games. 

In man hours, that’s a total of 31 games suspended. Reduced to ZERO by Tags. It was the right call. And not just because I enjoy seeing Goodell with a bit of omelette on his face, but because I think the NFL can change in a really productive way at this moment.

Where NFL Replacement Refs meet Gary Bettman and the NHL

The New York Times reports that many casual football fans are turned off by the mind-meltingly slow pace of NFL games due to the dithering, amateurish replacement officials. The NFL's lockout of their regular refs, it seems to me to me, presents not merely a chink in the previously impenetrable armor of the NFL, but a wee bit of a vacuum. If fans are turned off by the length and pace of NFL games, might they be inclined, I dunno, to watch something else?

It is a vacuum (however slight) that could be, and should be, filled by hockey. Hockey can easily sell itself to disenfranchised football fans. After all, both football and hockey are fast and violent, both require precise teamwork and vision, and both are sports where players sometimes do things that we ordinary mortals cannot even conceive of.

And to exploit this opening ... Gary Bettman and the NHL have engaged in a pissing contest with Donald Fehr and the NHLPA. Talk about murdering the goose that lays the golden eggs.