Correct. Aside from a settlement the options are:
1) Goodell did everything right, suspension stands
2) There was no basis for suspension, suspension void
3) The appeal was unfair, send to an unbiased arbitrator
There is not an option of Berman deciding what the punishment should be.
I think we're in agreement.
Berman is not being asked to decide who might or might not have deflated whose balls.
He's being asked to decide, at the behest of the N****ingL (and that is very important...Goodell took a chance by filing his motion in the Southern District and he ended up with a cranky senior judge, not some hot shot with political aspirations, who is trying to make a name for himself)...he's just being asked to decide whether the decision of the "Arbiter" Goodell
should or should not be vacated based on the CBA.
If he vacates the "Arbiter's" decision, he will likely recommend (with prejudice because it was Goodell who wasted his time, NOT Brady or the NFLPA) that the case be submitted to a truly independent arbiter, acceptable to
his Court, which, BTW, he no doubt feels is wasting its time on this when drug cartels, murderers and terrorists are the kind of vermin that usually walk into his courtroom.
His patience with a dispute between the privileged son of a US Senator and a hundred-millionaire athlete with a multi-hundred-millionaire wife is probably close to zero.
Please read some of my other posts. I know guys like this. I've lived among their ilk in NYC for 25 years. I have personal connections, not to Berman, but to the kind of folk that he is.
For the conspiracy theorists out there, please remember that this is a guy who probably wouldn't have recognized Tom Brady or Eli Manning on the street a week ago (though, he might know who "Gisele" is, but only because of his wife). He is a big fish in a world about which most folks on this board have no idea.
He wants this case out of his courtroom ASAP. My guess (and it's just a guess) is that he'll be a lot more sympathetic to Kessler than Wells, whom he probably regards as a weasel, but if either plays their cards wrong in his presence, he will find against them.