Getty ImagesThere?s a bit of a disconnect regarding the league?s willingness to investigate aggressively the depths of the cash-for-cripplings rabbit hole.? Said NFL general counsel Jeff Pash in Peter King?s most recent MMQB column:? ?If we found evidence of the same clarity that we found in the New Orleans case, we would take action.? We have looked into some allegations. But as you know, allegations and accusations are not proof.?
That creates the impression that the door is closed on punishing other teams, despite public admissions from men who played for former Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams in Buffalo and Washington that bounties were employed.
Perhaps the door isn?t closed.? Late Monday afternoon, Commissioner Roger Goodell suggested that other past instances of bounties will indeed by investigated, and punishment will where appropriate be dispensed.
?We haven?t closed the investigation,? Goodell said.? ?We have not stopped investigating.? If we get information, we follow up on it.? Because of the time frame and because of the league meeting, we have not met with people who we will meet with as soon as these meetings are over with.? We will continue it.? We have not said that everybody has a free pass here.? We are saying that we will continue to pursue any information that we get that is credible.?
But what is ?credible? information?? Is safety Coy Wire claiming bounties were used in Buffalo enough to trigger a full-blown investigation?? How about former Redskins defensive end Philip Daniels, who still works for the team and thus has no axe to grind, claiming Williams used bounties there?
The reality is that the league ? and the league alone ? decides what is and isn?t credible.? The league also exclusively decides how aggressively to proceed, or not proceed, when in a position to take an isolated allegation and work it into a file folder full of proof.
It?s the point we made Sunday night.? Back in 2010, the NFL arguably didn?t want to expose the Saints as cheater, so the league merely interviewed a few people, accepted their denials as true, and moved on.? It was only after the league realized, nearly two years later, that the Saints kept right on using bounties that the NFL launched a scorched earth investigation that resulted in the accumulation of thousands of pages of documents and, presumably, more than a handful of interviews that featured questions more probing than, ?Did you use bounties??
And so the league likely won?t initiate a comprehensive internal review as to other past instances of bounties.? Instead, the league will be inclined to wipe the slate clean and roll up its sleeves only if there?s any evidence moving forward of any type of a bounty system.
That?s why no sports league should be responsible for investigating the misconduct of its own members ? and also why the time possibly has come for a national commission that is responsible for ensuring that the American professional sports leagues are free from cheating of any kind, from drug use to bounties to any other activities that undermine integrity and unfairly influence outcomes.
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