ARE YOU NEW HERE? NOT LOGGED IN? PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT TO REGISTER FOR AN ACCOUNT AND LOGIN TO REMOVE THIS WINDOW
Welcome to PatsFans.com. Do you have an account? If not - please take a moment to register for our forum and experience a much smoother experience with fewer ads, along with no longer having to see this notification window. Also learn about how you can receive a free Patriots T-Shirt from the Patriots Official ProShop by CLICKING HERE. Please enjoy your stay here, and Go Pats!
After reading the evidence, it is damn hard to be sympathetic to the players who've been penalized. And their actions since have made it even harder. Obviously, Vilma and the others took no public relations courses in college.
FEATURED ADVERTISEMENT
DONATE TO PATSFANS.COM
RECEIVE A FREE PATS T-SHIRT AND SAVE 15% OFF WHEN YOU BUY FROM THE OFFICIAL PROSHOP!
Free T-Shirt & Save 15% Off!
Like Our Site? Please help support our site and server costs by DONATING TO PATSFANS.COM and receive a FREE PATRIOTS T-SHIRT and SAVE 15% off EVERY purchase you make from PatriotsProShop.com. You'll also receive added benefits to your account including Removing All Ads During Your Experience Here At Our Forum.
NEEDED YEARLY SITE DONATIONS: 345 | CURRENT # OF SUBSCRIBED SUPPORTERS: 98
The NO Times-Picayune reporters who were in attendance have been taking a beating form the locals for doing their job. This is probably the best wrap up on the day produced thus far.
Fujita shoud be the poster boy for why the NFLPA fails it's rank and file consistently. He was the Saints player rep in 2009 and a member of the Executive Committee that negotiated and signed off on the CBA. He apparently doesn't even grasp what he was suspended for...
Quote:
Fujita was present, too, and said afterward he has yet to see a shred of evidence indicating he deliberately tried to injure an opponent. Fujita insisted he has never done so in his career, and he lambasted the NFL for hurting his livelihood and for labeling anyone who disagreed with its interpretation of events "a liar."
"In assessing player discipline, I focused on players who were in leadership positions at the Saints; contributed a particular large sum of money toward the program; specifically contributed to a bounty on an opposing player; demonstrated a clear intent to participate in a program that potentially injured opposing players; sought rewards for doing so; and/or obstructed the 2010 investigation," Goodell said in his May 2 announcement suspending the four players.
Needing to do bargain for something and it being possible to do so are two totally different things, and I never said anything about your individual stance towards the NFLPA's bargaining priorities in the past (it's irrelevant to my argument).
You seem to think that something that is not bargained for (due process) is therefore not a principle that the NFL ought to adhere to in disciplining a player. I strongly disagree.
Many (though I'm not sure if you are one of them based on your posts) also seem to think that the absence of bargained for due process has relevancy in determining the guilt of the players as an outside party. I find that absurd.
I appreciate the compliment, if that's what it was, about my being generally a solid read. But please, I'm far from fragile, if you think you can "smack me down" about my "lousy argument" then have at it.
Please answer the following:
1) Is the NFL a private entity?
2) Is the NFLPA a private entity?
3) Do the NFL and NFLPA have any sort of agreement in place?
4) If the answer to #3 was yes, Does the agreement have set procedures on how player discipline is handled?
I have news for you. The answer to the above 4 questions is YES. and it's because of the YES answer to #4 that there is no "due process" other than what is described in the document. Once you realize that, then you'll be on the right page and whatever else you think is what doesn't matter.
There's little doubt the aggrieved players will find a way to take action against the league for the sanctions. But now that the league has shared its case with the press -- and, as a result, the public -- it's not quite the slam-dunk case of negligence the players have charged. Either way, this is a black eye that won't soon go away, and league officials seemed to take little joy in smearing such a charismatic franchise in a Manhattan boardroom at the start of a long, hot Monday.
"Does anyone think this is how we wanted to spend the offseason?'' Pash said, "taking one of the great stories of the NFL, the New Orleans Saints, where we're playing the Super Bowl this year, and having it dominate the headlines?''
No. But it is.
just read the entire article twice just to make sure....how the hell you arrive at this ludicrous "Goodell Slam Dunks The Players" stance you keep parroting defies reality...if anything, this column makes Goodell look even WORSE.Isn't it great that the league officials don't take any joy in SMEARING such a charismatic franchise...but smear they shall at any cost. Well then, what is good for the goose is good for the gander MY grandparents used to tell us....therefore,the players should continue with their efforts to show negligence even though, post this dog and pony Goodell show with the press yesterday, it's not quite the slam dunk it looked like. THAT means there is STILL a case there...any other interpretation suggesting finality is intergalactically moronic.
HUH? How does it make Goodell look even worse. Every article I have read has said that the evidence is pretty damning against the players. That they participated or knew about the bounty system. And that their refusal to partake in the investigation was pretty damning as well.
They had slides showing the emails from Peyton's computer. They had the video of Hargrove saying "Give me my money". They have the records of Williams and Vitt participating and donating money. They have the records of who was supposed to get what. And that is just the stuff the press mentioned to us.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Joker
Beyond this issue,anyone associated with the players union should be able to open up the Sal Alosi tripping scandal which, as anyone who was alive and breathing witnessed, Goodell quickly swept under the rug as he took at face value that Rex Ryan knew nothing of the organized actions of his players and coaching staff, even as the reprehensible and blatant breaking of NFL rules on national television were aired, re-aired, and archived for posterity. Why no press conference with the press explaining THAT unilateral decision by Goodell? Ryan said he knew nothing...that's it, case over! Fujita says he knows nothing...SMEAR SMEAR SMEAR..."even though I don't like it one bit...nope...don't like it...but YOU did it because I say so"....a two year old kid could see through this sham.
I don't like the whole sordid mess...I think what Williams was involved in was despicable...but for the life of me I cannot see why ANYONE would side with Goodell's intransigent stance against any transparency whatsoever. If what he says is true then meet the players in court and bury them...ON THE RECORD. THAT is the American way.
Goodell just gave out gobs of information to the press and the players. How can you claim there is no transparency. Sorry, but he's being more transparent than ANY damn politician has been. Goodell is following the rules that the PLAYERS and LEAGUE agreed to in the CBA. The COURTS have nothing to do with it. In fact, NEITHER SIDE wants this in court despite Vilma's claim to the contrary. In fact, Vilma's lawsuit will be tossed out based on Article 43 of the CBA since the Court is not the appropriate venue for adjudication.
There is no SHAM here. What is a sham is people crapping on Goodell just to crap on Goodell. Which is what you are doing. I don't care for him, but your bias has proven that you can't think logically about this case and give a rational opinion on it.
I can't help but wish the Patriots fought spygate this hard. Even if it didn't matter in the end I hate that we just rolled over and accepted the punishment.
You're kidding, right? What would be the point of the distraction of fighting Spygate, when the Patriots did what the NFL said they did. Belichick turned over the tapes. The outrage was that it didn't amount to anything competitively, and that Mangini chose to be an ingrate rat snitch publicly when the whole thing could have been handled at the owners' level.
The coaching staff in New Orleans isn't fighting this either - they did it!
My view of the players is that they did what the boss told them to do. Some were more zealous than others, but none should be punished as severely as the coaching staff. Maybe that's wrong, but I view this in the same way that the military deals with subordinates carrying out the orders of their superiors. The superiors should have to pay the greatest price.
In Bountygate , the offense is hugely more egregious than Spygate - players intentionally out to injure fellow members of the NFLPA and being encouraged to do so by management. Think about that. Your boss comes in and says, "I'll pay you $1,000 to go down the hall and hit the guy in accounting in the head to end his career just to show how tough we are."
Spygate was nothing compared to this travesty. This is the worst scandal to ever hit the NFL - even bigger than the Karas/Hornung gambling scandal of the early 1960s.
You seem to have misread my posts if you think I said anything like this. I have never once argued that the NFL is legally obligated to provide due process.
But you are correct in suggesting that Jonathan Vilma is entitled to "due process" should he choose to contest the discipline by an employer that results in loss of wages or his job (which could easily be the case given his age).
He can choose to grieve it through his union or he can pursue it privately in the courts. The main question is how he would articulate his complaint. 1) Is he saying he was falsely charged - that he did not do what the NFL says he did? 2) Is he arguing that what he did was not against the rules and guidelines of his employment contract? 3) Or is he arguing that the penalty was too harsh? 4) Or is he arguing that he couldn't possibly know better because he was a NY Jet?
I then went on to say that without due process the evidence presented selectively by the NFL is largely meaningless in determining guilt in response to this:
My entire argument from the get go was that the whole point of due process in our legal system is that verdicts are not reliable in any way without it. A poster disagreed and chose to link the players not having due process with them being guilty. You chose to jump in and make an argument out of complete ignorance and now that you've likely realized your mistake you are going to stick with it out of stubbornness.
If you took the time to actually read and absorb what other posters say it would go along in helping you avoid embarrassing exchanges like this in the future.
I know what you wrote. It was crap.
1.) "Due Process" is not a set thing, and the requirements for satisfying the notions of "Due Process" are not static and/or identical. This is why I asked you for some level of specificity. I was hoping that you'd smarten up enough to figure that out.
2.) Constitutional "Due Process" is not at play here, despite you bringing it up. It's completely inapplicable. The notion of Constitutional Due Process was that the individual needed to be protected from sham charges, mock trials and the like done by the power of the government, and was brought forward in modified form from the Magna Carta. That's moot here, because the discipline being laid out is the result of a contractual agreement between two clearly knowing and consenting parties, and not the result of an overwhelming government wrongly imposing itself and railroading a single citizen.
3.) The league did an investigation. It generated evidence. It asked the players to give their side of the story and defend themselves. The players refused to do so. The league acted. In other words, this was essentially a judgement by default (if you wish to think civilly), or a refusal to mount a defense (if you wish to think criminally). In other words, any lack of defense was the direct result of the actions of the defendants.
Quote:
Each of the four players suspended for participating in the New Orleans Saints' bounty scandal was invited to meet with NFL officials to defend themselves, with counsel present, before punishments were determined.
4.) The arbitrator has ruled that Goodell does, indeed, have jurisdiction of this case because of the CBA.
5.) Players (i.e. Vilma) took this to the arbitrator, per the CBA, meaning they did, in fact, have recourse. You've chosen to equate losing in front of the designated ruling body with not having legal recourse. That's asinine.
In other words, and to make the point once again, since you can't seem to fathom the obvious on this topic:
The notion of due process doesn't apply here, because this is a contest between consenting, relatively equal parties and not a contest between an overwhelming power and a lone citizen. If, however, we did want to demand a fair level of due process nonetheless, those levels were met to the level of many current governmental proceedings which do require the satisfaction of due process requirements. The problem here is that the NFLPA was stupid enough to allow the NFL to remain as judge, jury and executioner for on-the-field discipline instead of setting up an outside party as the arbiter.
So, unless you want to make the claim that the current CBA is not legally valid and go about arguing that in front of the courts, you've got nothing except being ridiculously wrong when posting
Quote:
Basically you and everyone else who rants constantly about Goodell being power mad are now saying that Goodell's accusations are automatically believable only because those who he accuses have zero legal recourse. Pretty bizarre logic.
__________________
"The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
- Marcus Aurelius
Now DaBruinzzzzzz pops up with more of Deus' irrelevancy from two pages ago and and lolDeus resurfaces with a wikipedia lesson on Due Process and more insisting that Goodell has the legal right to discipline the players (which I stated in my very first post).
Deus you seem like a moderately intelligent person but you are clearly stricken with debilitating arrogance. You have once again posted a long, bloated pile of silliness that amounts to nothing. You can continue on with your straw man and internet due process research if you want, but it doesn't seem like you understand much of anything I've said here so I'm going to move onto better things.
Please answer the following:
1) Is the NFL a private entity?
2) Is the NFLPA a private entity?
3) Do the NFL and NFLPA have any sort of agreement in place?
4) If the answer to #3 was yes, Does the agreement have set procedures on how player discipline is handled?
I have news for you. The answer to the above 4 questions is YES. and it's because of the YES answer to #4 that there is no "due process" other than what is described in the document. Once you realize that, then you'll be on the right page and whatever else you think is what doesn't matter.
The NO Times-Picayune reporters who were in attendance have been taking a beating form the locals for doing their job. This is probably the best wrap up on the day produced thus far.
Fujita shoud be the poster boy for why the NFLPA fails it's rank and file consistently. He was the Saints player rep in 2009 and a member of the Executive Committee that negotiated and signed off on the CBA. He apparently doesn't even grasp what he was suspended for...
54Likes
Re: OT: Vilma walks on out Bounty-Gate hearing
Linear Mode
