Saints Scandal

Defensive coordinator Gregg Williams and Defensive captain Jonathan Vilma
(Borrowed from www.businesweek.com)

Yesterday NFL commissioner Roger Goodell finally passed judgement on the main New Orleans Saints defensive players involved in the "bounty" scandal. For those of you who don't know what that is, from 2009 to 2011 (I think) the defensive coordinator of the team set up a program that paid defensive players extra money to take key players of the opposing team out of the game. I.e. they were told to specifically target old or healing wounds of specific opponents, and to do whatever they could to injure players to the point that they were no longer able to play in the game. It was totally against the rules of the NFL, and a pretty lousy, unsportsmanlike thing to do by all involved. I mean it's football not war. Those guys should know better.
The Commish didn't go lightly on anyone and I am glad. He shouldn't. We are talking about people's lives here, and that some guys were actually trying to maliciously do bodily harm is really serious. It's no different than jumping an innocent person in the street as far as I am concerned.
Here is how it panned out. The head coach Sean Payton is suspended for a year without pay. The defensive coordinator is suspended indefinitely. A couple other coaches were suspended for a few games. The team as a whole was fined $500,000 and their first two draft picks of this year were revoked. The ring-leader/captain of the defense Jonathan Vilma (who before I actually admired because I thought he was such a good leader for their defense) is suspended a year without pay, and three other players were suspended for several games a piece.
Over all I think the punishment is fair. On the one hand you want to make sure that no one else decides to do something similar so the punishment should be severe, but at the same time, once they pay for their crimes, I think we need to let it go. The main perpetrator is pretty much banned from the NFL and everyone else has, I think, learned their lesson.