No booze for players

[Frezo]

NEW YORK (AP) — NFL clubs may no longer serve alcohol at team functions or on buses or flights, extending a ban that until now applied only in locker rooms.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/nfl/2007-05-31-alcohol-ban_N.htm

It looks like the NFL is trying to eliminate any responsibility by the league for any alcohol related events that could cause legal action by an affected party and instead place all of the onus on the individual player.

 

[bronk37]

glad im a fan in this case

 

[dhamz]

It is a no brainer. The last thing a multi-billion dollar business like the NFL needs is the potential liability it would face if it provided a player (say Leonard Little) with free booze and then he got in his car and killed someone (again in Little's case).

 

[DaBruinz]

NEW YORK (AP) — NFL clubs may no longer serve alcohol at team functions or on buses or flights, extending a ban that until now applied only in locker rooms.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/nfl/2007-05-31-alcohol-ban_N.htm

It looks like the NFL is trying to eliminate any responsibility by the league for any alcohol related events that could cause legal action by an affected party and instead place all of the onus on the individual player.

Honestly, this is STUPID. Champagne toasts for a team that just won the SB are no longer allowed by the players? A team function at the Krafts house can't have alcohol served at it?

Sorry, but the league is over-stepping its bounds here.

 

[5 Rings for Brady!!]

Honestly, this is STUPID. Champagne toasts for a team that just won the SB are no longer allowed by the players? A team function at the Krafts house can't have alcohol served at it?

Sorry, but the league is over-stepping its bounds here.

Somewhere Goodell is in a darkened room flexing his bicep.

Oh Yeah........ it's on!

 

[TMoney]

Its a joke, I mean are these guys grown men or arew they underaged children wen need to watch. The commish is basically saying that the players are not responsible enough to handle themselves with a few drinks. As I said it is a joke, these guys aren't babies and the commish is a Biatch!!!!

 

[zarakotas5]

Whatever happened to PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY? Blah, blah, blah all day about this and that. We are exposed to various means to kill all sorts of people on a daily basis. To be reactionary and criminalize suspect, and admittedly more common, means, is simply targeting the weakest link.

It's easy and misguided. It makes sense and answers a question, but it ain't the right question. Sounds to me like stoning witches and forgetting that crops didn't grow because of using salt.

 

[zarakotas5]

That said, I think Goodall is a disciplinarian, but he's not an agenda-driven zealot. He seems to be a fair-minded guy.

 

[taltos]

Does this mean that owners can't serve alcoholic beverages in their private suites during a game? Does this mean that Coors Light loses its official beer status? Does he think that this ruling will keep players from drinking after practice and games? This one might need a rethink by the commissioner.

 

[Patsfanin Philly]

Does this mean that owners can't serve alcoholic beverages in their private suites during a game? Does this mean that Coors Light loses its official beer status? Does he think that this ruling will keep players from drinking after practice and games? This one might need a rethink by the commissioner.

Not necessarily so. It all comes down to one tihng, money... Or in this case liability, vicarious liability (liability on the part of the employer). The NFL is watching what happened with the baseball St. Louis Cardinals and their pitcher Josh Hanc0ck who had a few beers in the clubhouse after a game, went out to a bar for a few more where he turned down an offer of a cab home. Then, while allegedly talking on a cell phone and driving impaired, he plowed into a disabled car and tow truck on the side of the road, killing himself. Now Hanc0ck's family is suing the Cardinals, MLB (IIRC), the bar, the tow truck operator, the operator of the diabled car.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory?id=3211898

I'm sure Goodell is trying to limit the league's liability in the hope that if this happens to an NFL player, at least they can't sue the league (they can but he's hoping that they won't collect)if they don't allow alcohol either in the clubhouse or at league sanctioned activities. In my opinion, it would be a lot harder for an attorney to go into court and try to prove that the NFL is responsible for someone's alcohol-related death if they neither provide, nor sanction nor condone alcohol use. They aren't trying to prohibit alcohol use, they are just trying to shift repsonsiblity back to the individual where it belongs, on the individual rather than on the team.
The commish has said that he is just trying to act 'in the best interests' of pro football. With the current legal system, it seems like a prudent course.
I'm sure that they can find non-alcoholic champagne to useas a post-Super Bowl celebration.
Just my $0.02,

 

[MoLewisrocks]

Does this mean that owners can't serve alcoholic beverages in their private suites during a game? Does this mean that Coors Light loses its official beer status? Does he think that this ruling will keep players from drinking after practice and games? This one might need a rethink by the commissioner.

Why would it? Unless the players are hanging in the suite between snaps... They are likely doing this in part because all too many of these players (and even some of their coaches) have issues with drugs and alcohol, not to mention self control. We live in a litigious society where those who screw up are all too often looking for someone else to blame for their transgressions. Most if not all of these players drive themselves to and from the facility after games, including after getting back to their respective home field after a return flight from a road game - often in the middle of the night if not the wee hours of the AM. Goodell apparently wants to make it clear to both the players and society that if they screw up where alcohol consumption is concerned, it's on them and not their employer or his partners in the broader 32 team collective.

It's not often that the players association and the players council are in agreement with the league office on a policy. In this case they are. Why fans would take issue with it is therefore beyond me. As for the champagne celebrations, I think those have been gone for some time now and perhaps fans just hadn't noticed that players are spraying each other with non alcoholic beverages. I recall a player biatching about that situation not too long ago, I want to think it was a former Tampa Bay Buc who probably has nothing to worry about celebration wise where he went after 2002.

 

[strongside]

With all of that extra booze on their hands they will surely have to have 4th quarter beer sales!!

 

[SpiderFox53]

All this means is that the ring ceremony at the Kraft's house next year will be a little shorter than normal, as all the players leave to go to parties where they can have a few. :rocker:

 

[DaBruinz]

Not necessarily so. It all comes down to one tihng, money... Or in this case liability, vicarious liability (liability on the part of the employer). The NFL is watching what happened with the baseball St. Louis Cardinals and their pitcher Josh Hanc0ck who had a few beers in the clubhouse after a game, went out to a bar for a few more where he turned down an offer of a cab home. Then, while allegedly talking on a cell phone and driving impaired, he plowed into a disabled car and tow truck on the side of the road, killing himself. Now Hanc0ck's family is suing the Cardinals, MLB (IIRC), the bar, the tow truck operator, the operator of the diabled car.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory?id=3211898

I'm sure Goodell is trying to limit the league's liability in the hope that if this happens to an NFL player, at least they can't sue the league (they can but he's hoping that they won't collect)if they don't allow alcohol either in the clubhouse or at league sanctioned activities. In my opinion, it would be a lot harder for an attorney to go into court and try to prove that the NFL is responsible for someone's alcohol-related death if they neither provide, nor sanction nor condone alcohol use. They aren't trying to prohibit alcohol use, they are just trying to shift repsonsiblity back to the individual where it belongs, on the individual rather than on the team.
The commish has said that he is just trying to act 'in the best interests' of pro football. With the current legal system, it seems like a prudent course.
I'm sure that they can find non-alcoholic champagne to useas a post-Super Bowl celebration.
Just my $0.02,

HOW in bloody hell can the tow truck driver and the owner of the disabled car be at fault and sued over this? That is utterly friggin ridiculous. I hope that the judge throws it out of court just based on including those two as plaintiffs. I can DEFINITELY see a tow truck being at a disabled vehicle for 15 minutes. And the garbage about it being Tolar's fault because someone cut him off, causing him to spin out is just friggin ridiculous as well.

Hanc0ck's father can't accept that his son was an idiot and that everything that happened was his son's fault.

 

[Patsfanin Philly]

HOW in bloody hell can the tow truck driver and the owner of the disabled car be at fault and sued over this? That is utterly friggin ridiculous. I hope that the judge throws it out of court just based on including those two as plaintiffs. I can DEFINITELY see a tow truck being at a disabled vehicle for 15 minutes. And the garbage about it being Tolar's fault because someone cut him off, causing him to spin out is just friggin ridiculous as well.

Hanc0ck's father can't accept that his son was an idiot and that everything that happened was his son's fault.

That was my first reaction and you are preaching to the choir here. There is a legal concept of suing everyone involved and sorting it out later to avoid having one defendant try to shift blame to another one and leaving the plaintiff out in the cold. I'm not saying that I agree with it and in this situation Hanc0ck's own actions seem to be what lawyers call, the 'proximate cause' of his accident. But for his actions, it wouldn't have happened......

 

[taltos]

Mo read the USA Today article. It specifically mentions club officials in addition to players. My question about Kraft entertaining in his suite stands.

 

[MoLewisrocks]

Mo read the USA Today article. It specifically mentions club officials in addition to players. My question about Kraft entertaining in his suite stands.

I read it. I just didn't read into it what you apparently do.

"Effective immediately," it reads, "clubs are prohibited from providing alcoholic beverages, including beer, in any club setting, including in locker rooms, practice or office facilities, or while traveling, including on team buses or flights.

"This prohibition extends not only to players, but to all team personnel, as well as to other guests traveling with the team or who have access to club facilities."



It says in offices, not stadium suites. And I take the guest reference to mean friends and family of the players or staff or ownership only who are traveling on the team plane with the team gratis as guests of ownership. I don't think there are ever that many of them on Patriot charters except perhaps during away playoff trips when multiple charters may be paid for at team expense as Bob and his family and his guests usually don't fly with the team but rather in his private jet - which would be exempt from this kind of regulation. Or they get themselves to the venue (as in he's entertaining business acquaintances who did not travel with the team and who will not be allowed access to the locker room post game). At most to err on the side of caution this would mean Kraft can provide food but guests are required to BYOB.

Goodell obviously doesn't want players or personnel or guests getting all liquered up on team charters, nor does he want them imbibing in team lounges (which abound in new stadiums and could be seen as alternatives to post game celebratory drinking in locker rooms) or coaches or management offices (several active HC's and assistants have their own DUI deamons to deal with and alcoholics often hate to drink alone). He's just trying to distance the league as a whole from liability in the event that people who can't handle their liquer screw up as they often do and need to find a scapegoat to blame their troubles on.

 

[spacecrime]

NEW YORK (AP) — NFL clubs may no longer serve alcohol at team functions or on buses or flights, extending a ban that until now applied only in locker rooms.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/nfl/2007-05-31-alcohol-ban_N.htm

It looks like the NFL is trying to eliminate any responsibility by the league for any alcohol related events that could cause legal action by an affected party and instead place all of the onus on the individual player.

They cannot place the onus on the player. If they could it would be fine.

But if a guy has a fe beers provided by the team, then goes out and kills someone with his car, the team will be sued. They have more money than the player and are likely to settle out of court to avoid criticism and publicity.

The same folks who say this is stupid will be the first one to criticize the team when a drunken player goes out and runs over a couple kids on the sidewalk.

It's too bad that players aren't allowed to squirt each other with champagne after a victory, but writing a rule that allows booze sometimes and not others would be impossible.

This is jsut the NFL finally getting with the times. In the 70's and 80's we had company sponsored events with booze. Then employees had their own events with booze. Now booze is not permitted at events associated witht he company even if not paid by the company. It must be understood that the folks are acting on their own totally.

Thank the lawyers.

 

[Patjew]

I think this is a crock, personally. I am all for personal accountability. I don't think the team should force anyone to drink, but I'd be pretty pissed if I couldn't have a beer or two on the 5 hour flight back from a west coast game or at a ring ceremony, if I was so inclined. I mean, are these guys men or boys?