The schadenfreude is delicious, but so is the complete absurdity of, well, everything.
The NFL needs to get it head and ass wired together. If you're going to go through the pseudo legal motions of doing investigations where evidence is gathered and examined and testimony is sought and parsed and then reports are written by lawyers that are drenched in legalese, then go all the way. Make it clear ahead of time -- to the public -- what the "law" is. Have a set system of punishments. In other words, establish an independent -- a truly independent -- legal system. With lawyers. And judges. And juries.
Because the way it is now it's like Goodell and his buddies use these scandals as an excuse to dress up in black robes and powdered wigs and play "court room" so they can put the thinnest veneer over the fact that they're making it up as they go.
Ok, so deflating footballs is like PEDs, and PEDs gets you, uh... hmm. I know! A four game suspension? Whee!
Uh, but Ray Rice only got two games for going Hammer Time on his wife. How is that fair?
So? Jonathan Vilma got a whole year for throwing cash on the barrel head for hits that used to have their own segment on Sportscenter. Bam! Your argument just got... JACKED UP!
If they just dispensed with the charade that it's an actual, legal process, I don't think people would get bent so out of shape over it. Just post a picture of Goodell in his office holding a flower, plucking off the petals one by one going, "he loves me. He loves me not. He loves me..."
Because I think we all know that the NFL really isn't actually interested in crime and punishment for it's own sake (like the US justice system -- at least in theory
). All they really care about is PR. How do they balance their obvious moneyed interest in not punishing anyone at all, because guys like Tom Brady put eyeballs in front of televisions -- with perceived insults to the shield? Where do you draw the line on flags/fines on vicious hits because while there are lawsuits still to come, the fans still love those hits? What do they have to do to guys who smoke a bowl now and then because fatass white people in Topeka don't like their kid's role models using "the pot"?
It's an illegitimate process. So illegitimate that the attempts to make it
look legitimate only serve to further undermine it, especially since it seems like every independent arbitrator who gets involved with these things is eventually compelled to point out that the commish and his cronies are buffoons.