About 18 months ago I read the book "The NFL: A History of America's New Pastime..." by John Crepeau. It was a worthwhile read, if a little dry. However one of my takeaways from that book has been reinforced many times since, namely that the NFL favors the old guard over the newcomers. The old guard are those teams in the original NFL, and the newcomers are the AFL upstarts who were later merged into the NFL in 1966.
The NFL had 6 more teams than the AFL, so three were forced to become members of the AFC while the rest remained in the NFC. Those three? The Steelers, the Browns (latterly known as the Ravens), and the Baltimore Colts (later stolen away in the night to Indianapolis).
It is more than a coincidence that the sins of the old guard are less punished than the sins of the upstarts:
for example:
OLD GUARD
(Ravens) Ray Lewis murder involvement
(Colts) Harrison - victim shot by Harrison's gun at a petrol station
(Ravens) Ray Rice - domestic violence
(Vikings) Adrian Peterson - child abuse
(Steelers) Roethlisberger - sexual assault charge
(Cowboys) Hardy - domestic abuse
(Giants) Brown - domestic abuse
v
UPSTARTS
(Saints) Bountygate
(Patriots) Spygate and Deflategate (NFC Vikings and Panthers not fined for same offense)
(Chiefs) Maclin tampering
It is also apparent, especially in the Deflategate case, that owners and managers of the old guard were the first to condemn (Colts, Ravens), quick to demand stringent punishment (Cowboys) and resistant to condemn the miscarriage of justice perpetrated by the NFL officers (Giants).
What disturbs me most about the Old Guard list is that all offenses are crimes against humans, while the Upstart list contains not crimes or misdemeanors but rule violations
The only anomaly for this observation is the treatment of the Jets, which can only be explained by the number of NFL executives with ties to that franchise. The very same executives that led the whole Deflategate sting and propaganda machine.
Parity it seems can be leveled, so that the old guard can be favored while the upstarts can be additionally handicapped. It is time for the league to be moved away from New York (Akron will do), and these historic privileges and biases removed.