Pacman is appealing to the NFL commissioner, Goodell, over his suspension. Ok, great. Whatever, I’m not here to talk about Pacman or Chris Henry, who is benched for 8 games for driving with a suspended license. Sure. Ok, whatever. I’ve got an idea. I want you to hear me, Goodell.
Stop the suspensions. Yup. Stop them. INSTEAD I offer you a way to truly improve the player’s image and the NFL’s while you’re at it.
Instead of suspending a player without pay, thus lessening the entire ball club, potentially hurting revenue for the entire team and to a greater extent, the NFL… instead of that do this…
Make them play.
Donate their “suspended salary” to a charity of the LOCAL community’s choosing. So, if you’re Chris Henry, we take the money that you would have made in those 8 weeks and make a donation on behalf of the NFL to, let’s say, the Cincinnati United Way.
This way, the player IS WORKING FOR FREE which is incentive enough to not be a douche nozzle. The NFL gets more tax breaks and the United Way gets the funds it deserves.
Oh, the player is benched? Then it doesn’t count. A standard game has 60 minutes of play time, right? Well, you don’t get suspended for 8 games, you get suspended for 480 game minutes. You don’t get paid again, until you’ve played them and THE KIDS DON’T GET THEIR CASH UNTIL YOU MAN UP AND PLAY THE 480 MINUTES!!!!
This plan is genius. Period. If you don’t think so, ask yourself this…
Would the Bengal’s have had the season they had last year if Thurmon was in the lineup? Who can say? But I argue that they were a worse team without him which hurts the Bengals, the NFL, and the city of Cincinnati when they lose. Instead, make him play, then money is flowing and everyone is happy EXCEPT THE ASSHAT who deserves to work hard for nothing but the love of the game. Maybe then they’ll remember what they’re doing out there.
2 responses so far ↓
Adam // April 14, 2007 at 5:04 pm
One problem: what happens when a player gets injured at some point during that unpaid playing time? Pay him for the time that he’s injured and stop when he’s recovered so he can finish his time? I think we’d have lots of guys sitting out with “turf toe” if that happened. And if we go the other way and refuse to pay them when they’re injured we’d have guys playing some weak-ass football just looking to coast through their unpaid time without getting hurt.
I don’t have a problem with the suspensions right now. Yeah it might hurt the team…that part sucks…but if these guys give a damn about the team or the city they can change their behavior.
Leon // April 14, 2007 at 6:50 pm
ok, I’ve got this covered too… You bring a good point.
IR players will be compensated for the injury by the standard IR policy and remaining time can be served doing public service during the time off. Look, If I can’t program because someone slams my fingers, I get time to recover but if I want to keep my job then I’m going to answer phones or something while I recover.
I’m just saying there is a better way than just sending these guys home without pay for being bad citizens. It does NO ONE, including the offender, any good to do so. You want to rehabilitate someone, then do it. Don’t make them random “examples” cause that shit doesn’t work.