Norma Rae in a Fedora

Next week the NFL owners and the trade group formerly known as the National Football League Players Association union are scheduled to resume another round of negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement. Don’t expect anything to get done.

To this point, to call what the talks that these two parties have been engaged in “negotiations” is like calling “Dancing with the Stars” entertainment. It’s just not quite the right word. Instead, the players and their former union have been basically in a stare-down, each claiming they're fighting for what's best seemingly unencumbered by the thought that the game they both profess to love is being jeopardized by their very actions.

For now, union leader DeMaurice Smith, clueless and tone deaf as always, looks at the union's attempt to overthrow the owners and the game as a bit of a Holy War, if a Holy War is what you'd call a fight between the Corleone's and the Tattaglia's.

Invoking Clemenza on Friday, Smith said that the owners forced the players to “go to the mattresses” at the negotiating table. He said the owners had lied to the players and tried to trick them into a deal and as a result the union had to decertify in order to pursue this not as a labor matter but as an anti-trust violation.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, meanwhile, was not nearly as strident or metaphorical. In a separate interview on Friday, Goodell, seeing no reason to attack the players or even Smith, just pointed out the obvious, saying that the vision that the union has for the game, as evidenced by the court filings, is detrimental to the game itself. The union has claimed, for example, that both the draft and the salary cap are illegal and both serve as underpinnings for the incredible success of the league.

But the one yarn that Smith continues to try and spin is to paint the owners' pursuit of an appeal of Judge Susan Richard Nelson's ruling that lifting the lockout as an unprecedented action in which a group of owners of a business are purposely suing to not do business.

They're not suing to stay out of business and Smith knows it. They're appealing a lawsuit filed by the union and the players. That alone is a world of difference. Further, they're appealing in order to keep this as a labor dispute to solve between two inextricably linked parties instead of an anti-trust action where one party's interest is in in hurting the other.

But perhaps the most tone-deaf aspect of Smith's rhetoric is simply that the strategy he's led, having his union actually decertify, is far more unprecedented of an action than a garden-variety appeal of an adverse legal ruling.

Simply put, the course the union is on has been pursued only one other time, by this same union. It's not been done in any other sport and as far as I can tell has not been done in any other industry. But Smith and his advisers believe that this strategy, launched early last year when Smith had each team's players vote during training camp on decertifying, is the most clever and innovative approach and that they are true trailblazers. Norma Rae in a fedora.

Smith meanwhile talks about the braveness of his players and their unbending commitment to their sport, invoking for example Drew Brees' getting together of players to work out as proof that all the players really want to do is play the game they love. In truth, the lambs are being led to slaughter.

Fundamentally, the standoff is about each side testing the other’s mettle. The owners want a bigger piece of the revenue pie and the players are adamant that the owners are going to get it and don’t need it anyway. As long as the owners can keep the players locked out, the players’ thinking goes, eventually they’ll crack. As long as the courts keep a lockout from taking place, the players’ thinking goes, eventually the owners will crack.

Right now the pressure is a bit on the players in the sense that the 8th circuit court of appeals doesn’t seem to be in a terrible hurry to lift their temporary stay of Judge Susan Richard Nelson’s ruling finding that the lockout was impermissible. Each day that passes the players aren’t getting the workout bonuses that supplement their income nicely during the spring and summer months.

But if the lockout is enjoined and the owners are forced to open their doors, those bonuses will once again flow, the season will go forward unabated and there will be game checks to eventually cash. If that becomes the case, the players and their advisers will surely sit their like petulant children who refuse the vegetables their parents shove in front of their faces and no meaningful negotiations will take place in the near term.

Eventually, though, the vegetables must get eaten. The question is when will the players and Smith come to that conclusion? If the lockout stays, that’s easy. The players will crack. They always do. If the lockout is lifted, things get far more complex.

You don’t have to be the Ghost of NFL Future to see how it all plays out because Goodell's has already laid it out for them. They just aren't listening.

In the near term, the owners will adopt some interim rules, careful not to violate anti-trust laws to meet the court’s requirements, but will otherwise be no more motivated to reach a new deal. That will be fine with the players, of course, because as long as they can play football under any rules and get paid, they really won’t see any need to say yes to any re-ordering of the leagues’ revenues.

Indeed, you can expect an almost party atmosphere from the players, at least initially. Unrestricted free agency for any player not under contract, hooray. No draft. A chastened ownership group that can’t work collectively to set the economic road map for the league. What could get better than that? Smith will be canonized by the players as the very re-incarnation of Marvin Miller.

Well, that may be right but only if you thing that could go on indefinitely, which it can’t.

If you believe, for example, that a cooperative, productive relationship between management and the workers is critical to the product produced, then it follows that when the relationship is broken, the product will suffer. Count on it.

As the product suffers, so does the interest others, like networks and beer manufactures, have in supporting it, at least at current levels. Besides, as current contracts like that expire, then the landscape for new deals becomes more fragmented. Teams won’t just be negotiating for their local radio rights, but for their local television rights as well because the owners’ ability to work collectively on these issues becomes severely hampered.

As the economic base begins to crumble, there will be no incentive, for example, for the owners to spend money in such an uncertain climate. Even in the near term, when media and sponsorship contracts still are fully in place, there will be plenty of owners pinching pennies.

There may be unrestricted free agency for any player not under a contract, but that doesn’t mean the floodgates open for new found riches. In fact, I’d expect the opposite to happen. Put it this way, there were plenty of teams in the NFL already spending the bare minimum when there was a salary cap in place. Do you think they would spend more without a cap?

At the same time, injured players would find themselves without protection and potentially benefits, including extended health or retirement benefits. In order to avoid a charge of illegal anti-trust activity, there probably won’t be league wide benefit levels. Instead, each and every one of those items would be subject to individual negotiations.

Maybe some of the top players might benefit from that scenario, the vast majority of the league’s players would not. You only need to see all the efforts underway in states to eliminate the collective bargaining rights of state employees to understand that the lack of the union doesn’t generally raise the standard of living for the employees, it lowers it.

As that scenario plays out over several months and perhaps a year or two, eventually enough players will get fed up with the legal strategy that the union set in motion and make efforts to re-form a union. That would be the point at which the current union leadership might begin to realize that it’s rarely about winning the smaller battles when the outcome of the war is still in jeopardy.Next week the NFL owners and the trade group formerly known as the National Football League Players Association union are scheduled to resume another round of negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement. Don’t expect anything to get done.

To this point, to call what the talks that these two parties have been engaged in “negotiations” is like calling “Dancing with the Stars” entertainment. It’s just not quite the right word. Instead, the players and their former union have been basically in a stare-down, each claiming they're fighting for what's best seemingly unencumbered by the thought that the game they both profess to love is being jeopardized by their very actions.

For now, union leader DeMaurice Smith, clueless and tone deaf as always, looks at the union's attempt to overthrow the owners and the game as a bit of a Holy War, if a Holy War is what you'd call a fight between the Corleone's and the Tattaglia's.

Invoking Clemenza on Friday, Smith said that the owners forced the players to “go to the mattresses” at the negotiating table. He said the owners had lied to the players and tried to trick them into a deal and as a result the union had to decertify in order to pursue this not as a labor matter but as an anti-trust violation.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, meanwhile, was not nearly as strident or metaphorical. In a separate interview on Friday, Goodell, seeing no reason to attack the players or even Smith, just pointed out the obvious, saying that the vision that the union has for the game, as evidenced by the court filings, is detrimental to the game itself. The union has claimed, for example, that both the draft and the salary cap are illegal and both serve as underpinnings for the incredible success of the league.

But the one yarn that Smith continues to try and spin is to paint the owners' pursuit of an appeal of Judge Susan Richard Nelson's ruling that lifting the lockout as an unprecedented action in which a group of owners of a business are purposely suing to not do business.

They're not suing to stay out of business and Smith knows it. They're appealing a lawsuit filed by the union and the players. That alone is a world of difference. Further, they're appealing in order to keep this as a labor dispute to solve between two inextricably linked parties instead of an anti-trust action where one party's interest is in in hurting the other.

But perhaps the most tone-deaf aspect of Smith's rhetoric is simply that the strategy he's led, having his union actually decertify, is far more unprecedented of an action than a garden-variety appeal of an adverse legal ruling.

Simply put, the course the union is on has been pursued only one other time, by this same union. It's not been done in any other sport and as far as I can tell has not been done in any other industry. But Smith and his advisers believe that this strategy, launched early last year when Smith had each team's players vote during training camp on decertifying, is the most clever and innovative approach and that they are true trailblazers. Norma Rae in a fedora.

Smith meanwhile talks about the braveness of his players and their unbending commitment to their sport, invoking for example Drew Brees' getting together of players to work out as proof that all the players really want to do is play the game they love. In truth, the lambs are being led to slaughter.

Fundamentally, the standoff is about each side testing the other’s mettle. The owners want a bigger piece of the revenue pie and the players are adamant that the owners are going to get it and don’t need it anyway. As long as the owners can keep the players locked out, the players’ thinking goes, eventually they’ll crack. As long as the courts keep a lockout from taking place, the players’ thinking goes, eventually the owners will crack.

Right now the pressure is a bit on the players in the sense that the 8th circuit court of appeals doesn’t seem to be in a terrible hurry to lift their temporary stay of Judge Susan Richard Nelson’s ruling finding that the lockout was impermissible. Each day that passes the players aren’t getting the workout bonuses that supplement their income nicely during the spring and summer months.

But if the lockout is enjoined and the owners are forced to open their doors, those bonuses will once again flow, the season will go forward unabated and there will be game checks to eventually cash. If that becomes the case, the players and their advisers will surely sit their like petulant children who refuse the vegetables their parents shove in front of their faces and no meaningful negotiations will take place in the near term.

Eventually, though, the vegetables must get eaten. The question is when will the players and Smith come to that conclusion? If the lockout stays, that’s easy. The players will crack. They always do. If the lockout is lifted, things get far more complex.

You don’t have to be the Ghost of NFL Future to see how it all plays out because Goodell's has already laid it out for them. They just aren't listening.

In the near term, the owners will adopt some interim rules, careful not to violate anti-trust laws to meet the court’s requirements, but will otherwise be no more motivated to reach a new deal. That will be fine with the players, of course, because as long as they can play football under any rules and get paid, they really won’t see any need to say yes to any re-ordering of the leagues’ revenues.

Indeed, you can expect an almost party atmosphere from the players, at least initially. Unrestricted free agency for any player not under contract, hooray. No draft. A chastened ownership group that can’t work collectively to set the economic road map for the league. What could get better than that? Smith will be canonized by the players as the very re-incarnation of Marvin Miller.

Well, that may be right but only if you thing that could go on indefinitely, which it can’t.

If you believe, for example, that a cooperative, productive relationship between management and the workers is critical to the product produced, then it follows that when the relationship is broken, the product will suffer. Count on it.

As the product suffers, so does the interest others, like networks and beer manufactures, have in supporting it, at least at current levels. Besides, as current contracts like that expire, then the landscape for new deals becomes more fragmented. Teams won’t just be negotiating for their local radio rights, but for their local television rights as well because the owners’ ability to work collectively on these issues becomes severely hampered.

As the economic base begins to crumble, there will be no incentive, for example, for the owners to spend money in such an uncertain climate. Even in the near term, when media and sponsorship contracts still are fully in place, there will be plenty of owners pinching pennies.

There may be unrestricted free agency for any player not under a contract, but that doesn’t mean the floodgates open for new found riches. In fact, I’d expect the opposite to happen. Put it this way, there were plenty of teams in the NFL already spending the bare minimum when there was a salary cap in place. Do you think they would spend more without a cap?

At the same time, injured players would find themselves without protection and potentially benefits, including extended health or retirement benefits. In order to avoid a charge of illegal anti-trust activity, there probably won’t be league wide benefit levels. Instead, each and every one of those items would be subject to individual negotiations.

Maybe some of the top players might benefit from that scenario, the vast majority of the league’s players would not. You only need to see all the efforts underway in states to eliminate the collective bargaining rights of state employees to understand that the lack of the union doesn’t generally raise the standard of living for the employees, it lowers it.

As that scenario plays out over several months and perhaps a year or two, eventually enough players will get fed up with the legal strategy that the union set in motion and make efforts to re-form a union. That would be the point at which the current union leadership might begin to realize that it’s rarely about winning the smaller battles when the outcome of the war is still in jeopardy.

Storm Clouds

If ever there was a time to love the sport and not the players, now is that time. While it has probably happened any number of times in the past, it is difficult to remember a time when all three major league sports were operating under such serious clouds at the same time.

Baseball’s deliberate ignorance of its mushrooming steroids problem is coming home to roost for good in the next week or so when Barry Bonds finally surpasses Hank Aaron’s career home run record. The dark underbelly of those that are allowed to lace up the spikes every Sunday in the NFL is being revealed in the form of one of its most prominent players, Michael Vick, who now has been ordered not to report to training camp because of a multi-count indictment over dog fighting. Meanwhile, the NBA’s integrity hangs in the balance as the Tim Donaghy referee scandal is spreading like a wild fire. As a sports fan, if you don’t find all this just a bit dispiriting then you’ve either lost your capacity to be surprised or you just don’t care anymore.

Much has been written about each of these topics already and many more words are yet to be spilled. But it is the combined effect of all three that most serves to alienate the average sports fan at a time when none of these leagues are in a position to afford it, even if they don’t know it or don’t care about it.

The issue with Bonds, for example, has polarized the game in a way that Commission Bud Selig still can’t fully appreciate. He may fiddle over the decision as to whether to follow Bonds around in order to witness the historic event, but Selig’s overall strategy is to simply drag this issue out long enough in the hope that the fans simply lose interest. The Mitchell Committee, by all accounts, has made virtually no headway in its investigation of steroids. Selig seemingly strong-armed New York Yankees user Jason Giambi into talking to Mitchell but then reportedly let him off the hook by not even asking him about other players. What did they talk about, the weather?

Selig, as Commissioner now and as an owner when steroid use became rampant, is paralyzed by indecision and the only thing suffering in the process is the foundation of the game. What is all the more disgusting in this entire debate is the utter lack of courage by the players or their union to stand up for what is right—the good of the game. Each continues to play the “we don’t know all the facts” game as a way of avoiding the issue all together, fully failing to recognize that they all stand as unindicted co-conspirators as a result of their inaction.

The fact that Bonds is even being given the opportunity to play this year is perhaps the most reprehensible aspect of this whole matter. The grand jury testimony regarding Bonds may have been illegally leaked, but that fact doesn’t make what that testimony supposedly says about Bonds steroid use any less credible. Bonds can continue to act as if his continued abuse of the drugs was inadvertent, but he can’t hide behind the fact that he did use and baseball can’t hide behind the fact that he hasn’t been penalized for it. In fact, he’s been rewarded for it.

The fans in San Francisco are simply delusional about this issue, choosing to take the short-term feel good approach of one of their own rather than consider the long-term implications. The Giants managing general partner, Peter Magowan, who approved Bonds for the one year contract he’s playing under this season, is far more interested in the additional revenue that the circus that is Bonds will generate than in protecting the game at any level. And Selig, he just wrings his hands.

In many of the same ways that Bonds and his co-horts has already threatened the integrity of baseball, so too does what is taking place in the NBA threaten the integrity of that game.

The reason gambling is, in many ways, worse for a sport than illegal drugs begins and ends with the simple fact that it is the tipping point between sport and theatre. You can always toss out a druggie or two from the game, but trying to rid the sport of a reputation that its outcomes are pre-ordained is a much more vexing and serious problem.

The story that is emerging about Tim Donaghy will not be easily swept under the rug by Commissioner David Stern, despite his attempt to minimize the damage by letting the story break during the death days of July. Stern’s performance, and it was a performance, during his press conference Tuesday morning showed him at his shakiest. Clearly traumatized by the issue, he nonetheless gave fans little comfort by essentially creating more questions than he answered.

Two things in particular stand out. First, Stern gave the fans no idea how long the investigation was going on or how it even came to light. Was the league watching Donaghy or was the league contacted by the FBI? It pushes the limits of his credibility for Stern to say, as he did, that this problem begins and ends with Donaghy. If Donaghy was indeed making phantom calls, how is it that none of his fellow referees noticed, and if they noticed, didn’t say anything? If that’s true, doesn’t make them at least partially complicit, even if they didn’t reap any benefits personally? Any referee in any sport can and will blow a call. But if a referee is doing enough of that in order to deliberately alter the outcome of a game, certainly someone in the league had to notice before it would have otherwise been brought to their attention.

And if they did notice, how could they not do something sooner? This is the second thing that stands out about the Stern press conference. He said that the league certainly would have liked to have terminated Donaghy sooner but was told that the investigation was best aided by not terminating him until he did. That may be true if the ultimate goal is criminal prosecution, but it seems like the ultimate goal for the NBA should have been protecting the game first and foremost and then let the criminal justice process have its hacks at him.

Here’s why. If Stern knew that Donaghy was affecting the outcome of games and did nothing about it in order to let the investigation run its course, how can we be sure that the games Donaghy affected didn’t impact the standings? And if they impacted the standings, it is likely that they impacted who qualified for the playoffs and who didn’t, the seeding of the teams in those playoffs and, ultimately, the pecking order in the NBA draft. By letting the investigation run its course, how can any franchise be certain that it hasn’t been negatively impacted for years to come? But it this way—if the difference is one or two additional ping pong balls in the lottery that ultimate gets you, say LeBron James and not Darko Milicic, wouldn’t that bother you as a fan?

The answer, of course, is that you can never be sure. And while that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s time to blow up the sport, it does mean that Stern has to do more, much more, than rail against Donaghy as some sort of rogue or that this was some sort of isolated incident. Even if that is possibly true, the effect of his actions is hardly isolated.

It may very well be that some fans don’t mind having their outcomes scripted. That’s why the WWE is so popular. But in any sport where the outcome isn’t supposed to be preordained, such as basketball, no issue threatens to bring it down more quickly than someone on the inside who’s been gaming the system. And whether Stern wants to admit it or not, putting in place a whole new set of procedures to safeguard the integrity and the transparency of his sport is what it will take to even begin scratching the surface of removing the whispers that will inevitably followed the next time LeBron James gets clobbered going to the basket and the whistle isn’t blown.

As for the NFL and its Michael Vick problem, it may not threaten the league in the same way that the Donaghy incident threatens the NBA, but it is a public relations nightmare of the first order that can’t be minimized, either.

Commission Roger Goodell has been rightfully applauded for drawing a line in the sand early on that bad behavior will not be tolerated. He, too, has rightfully held up Adam “Pacman” Jones as the poster child by suspending him a year. It wouldn’t be too much to ask, frankly, for him to consider suspending the entire Bengals team for a year or so given the institutional problems it has. But having taken himself so far out on that limb, Goodell finds himself hamstrung by the Vick incident in a way he never anticipated.

The indictment against Vick couldn’t be more damning and includes charges of interstate illegal gambling, dog fighting and animal cruelty. It is sufficiently well detailed and documented (read a copy of the indictment here) to make it reasonable to draw some conclusions about Vick, at least in the same way Goodell drew some conclusions about Pacman following his indictments.

It did Goodell no good to initially avoid the suspension of Vick by trying to distinguish his situation from the numerous run-ins that Pacman has found himself in the center of. What Goodell didn’t realize is how heinous Vick’s alleged conduct is viewed by the average person. Goodell also didn’t appreciate the ability of the internet as an organizing tool, which was on full display when PETA and others picketed outside of Goodell’s office in New York last week. When PETA showed up in Atlanta next that was enough for Goodell to at least take a mid-term approach and order Vick not to report for camp until the NFL’s investigation is complete.

If the NFL has any hopes of surviving this public relations disaster, one of two things need to happen. Either the indictment against Vick has to get dropped or the NFL has to keep Vick on the sidelines until the legal system runs its course. The first is unlikely and the second will undoubtedly be challenged by the union. But that is one case that Goodell should be more than willing to take on, for it’s far better to have an arbitrator force Goodell to let Vick back at work than it is for Goodell to appear as though he’s making an exception for Vick because of his status in the league.

While no one is predicting the ultimate demise of any of the leagues, what this does do is further cement in the minds of the fans that investing in them and particularly the people who play them doesn’t come without great risk. Unfortunately, it’s a message that isn’t likely to register all that much with any of these leagues. After all, right now, if you’re willing to part with $260, you can get an authentic Michael Vick jersey by ordering it through the NFL’s official web site.

It's About Time

All you ever needed to know about the difference between the way major league baseball and professional football are governed came this week.

In short order, the figurehead running baseball, Commissioner Bud Selig, scratched his head, wrung his hands, and addressed a freak early spring snow storm in Cleveland by sending the Indians to Milwaukee to play a home series, thereby depriving Cleveland fans of at least 3 home games. Meanwhile, NFL Commission Roger Goodell, fed up with a string of embarrassing incidents of off-field misconduct put his foot down on the litany of player misconduct and reconstituted the league’s conduct policy and sent its two poster boys miscreants, Adam “Pacman” Jones and Chris Henry, packing for the better part of next season.

In the first case it was just another in an embarrassing string of weak and poor decisions by one of the great thumbsuckers of all time. In the latter case, a commissioner running a major sport asserted his authority and literally dared anyone to disagree. The difference in leadership may not be the only reason one sport is healthier than the other, but it’s the main reason.

Consider the evidence. When steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs emerged as the issue threatening the integrity of major league baseball, its players and nearly every key offensive statistic in its record book, Selig was ever the man of inaction, so afraid that any move he might make would incur the wrath of union head Donald Fehr. As a result, baseball had a joke of a drug testing program that allowed steroids to run rampant and unchecked. Fehr winked as he hoisted himself and his clients on the podium of personal privacy knowing full well, as did everyone else, that the real motive was economic. Chicks not only dig the long ball, so do the fans and players who can hit it far or throw it faster make more money. After all, a high tide raises all ships.

Rather than take Fehr on, Selig has instead allowed Fehr and his misguided agenda to control the best interests of the game. It was only when Congress stepped in and literally threatened to eliminate baseball’s precious but antiquated antitrust exemption that the drug policy changed. Even with that, the policy is still a joke when compared to its counterparts in nearly every other sport, including amateur sports.

But this was hardly the only example of Selig’s spineless leadership or his handing over of the steering wheel to Fehr and the players union. Selig has never been able to negotiate a salary cap with Fehr despite its presence in every other professional sport. Likewise, he has not been able to use the gravitas of his office to convince the owners that revenue sharing is in the best interest of their sport. Instead, he wrings he hands, complains that this and every issue is hopelessly complicated and what the fans are left with is a situation whereby the New York Yankees can spend $189 million on players while the Tampa Bay Devil Rays have a payroll of $24 million.

The adoption of the unbalanced schedule in baseball, ostensibly to create better intra-division rivals has had any manner of unintended consequences and is responsible, in great measure, to what happened to the Indians this past weekend. Amazingly, the opening day weekend visit by the Seattle Mariners is the only time that team will be here all season! Same for the California Angels. Given that this is necessitated by an unbalanced schedule and inter-league play, it begs the question as to why both teams had to visit in April as opposed to having Cleveland open in either city where weather wouldn’t have been an issue. But again, Selig wrings his hands and complains that the issue is soooooo complicated. No one seriously expects Selig to ask the owners to shrink the schedule a bit in order to eliminate early April games or November playoffs, but he could at least take control over the schedule to the point where it’s not necessary to ask the players union for permission to add an additional day/night doubleheader or two. As strong as the United Auto Workers might be, they don’t get the right to determine how many cards the auto companies are allowed to produce.

Football, under first Pete Rozelle then Paul Tagliabue and now Roger Goodall, may not be perfect, but it’s never been the management mess that is major league baseball. The various commissioners always have maintained control over their sport in a way that must make Selig envious, assuming he could recognize the difference. Football’s drug testing system may not be as stringent as that used in the Olympics, but it’s significantly stronger than that in place in baseball and has been in effect for many more years. But the biggest difference between the two sports was starkly illustrated by Goodell’s moves on Tuesday.

Simply put, Goodell wasn’t paralyzed by inaction nor did he feel constrained by how the union might react. Instead, he put the hammer down on Jones and Henry and in the process sent a message to every person affiliated with the league that he is in charge and either this kind of conduct stops immediately or there will be sever consequences. And, more importantly, he didn’t wait to see whether the union would give him permission to shorten the leash. Upshaw’s comments to ESPN were the most telling. "The NFL Players Association and the Player Advisory Council have been discussing this issue for several months," Upshaw said to ESPN. "We believe that these are steps that the commissioner needs to take and we support the policy. It is important that players in violation of the policy will have the opportunity and the support to change their conduct and earn their way back."

Goodell’s approach was the polar opposite of how Selig would have handled it. Faced with a problem calling for decisive action, he discussed his concerns with the union but he didn’t wait for their permission to act. In asserting his authority, Goodell also essentially dared Upshaw to try to defend the indefensible conduct of a growing cadre of thugs in the league. Upshaw, a more pragmatic leader than Fehr anyway, didn’t dare take on Goodell over this issue and instead supported it. He didn’t complain or threaten legal action but instead embraced what was in the fans best interest. While this may something good about the kind of leader Upshaw is, it also firmly establishes that there is no question who is running the sport.

One can only imagine if Selig had this matter on his plate. Undoubtedly he would have talked tough to the press until Fehr essentially said negotiate or else. Selig would have then set up some worthless ad-hoc committee to make recommendations that would be ignored the next time the parties decided to get together at the bargaining table to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement.

The situation with Pacman Jones in Tennessee is a national joke. The situation in Cincinnati, in other ways, is even more serious. And in both cases, action from the top was needed because in both cases neither ownership nor management was adequately addressing the problem. It wasn’t Jones’ first time to the rodeo and the same was true for Henry. Moreover, the number of players arrested on the Bengals no longer suggested coincidence but culture. With these suspensions and the concurrent tightening of league conduct policies, Goodell sent a message to both teams, and everyone else, that continuing to allow that kind of culture to exist will not only result in action against the player but also against the team. The most likely target will be draft choices. In a league where draft choices are treated like the crown jewels that will certainly get some attention.

In the end, Goodell did what he had to do. It’s refreshing to actually see that happen in professional sports.