Bounty-Gate Penalties are a joke -- but what choice did the NFL really have?

The hammer came down on the Saints today.

• Head Coach Sean Payton suspended for a year.
• GM Mickey Loomis suspended for half a season.
• Assistant Joe Vitt banned for six games and fined $100,000.
  

In reality, this is probably the end for Sean Payton in the NFL. Maybe not as forcefully as Williams (see below), but this is probably a signal that Sean Payton will never realistically coach in the National Football League again.

What you see on the surface is a one-year suspension for Payton. The suspension is for what the NCAA would call the dreaded "failure of institutional control". I cannot see Roger Goodell allowing Sean Payton to coach anywhere in the league again, but there just wasn't enough beyond "The Buck Stops Here" to nail Payton unless you wanted to give the kind of penalties I would've given (see below).

The problem I have is why the NFL has not stepped in and effectively taken over the Saints, as I'll talk about below. If you suspend Payton, you have to give the similar ban to the GM, at minimum, to force the Saints to can them both.

• Gregg Williams has been banned from the National Football League for life, with a review coming after the 2012 season.

This is the big one. Not big enough, as far as a number of other factors are concerned (barring any appeal process, there should not have been any "review" to possibly reinstate, for one), but this was basically expected as time went on.

Gregg Williams has all but certainly exposed the NFL to massive legal liabilities and culpabilities (the previous post I made about Williams effectively putting out Favre, Warner, and Manning is just one example), and I don't think the punishment adequately addresses what the NFL really states it wants to do.

• The draft picks? 2012 and 2013 second-rounders.
• Player punishments are still being discussed with the NFLPA.
  

Any more evidence this is a joke?

Basically, here would be my penalties if I were the Commissioner.

• The New Orleans Saints do not exist for at least one season. The team is disqualified from the National Football League until a further review of the extent of the conduct (by outside legal authorities -- an independent prosecutor, if you will) is done. The league goes with 31 teams next year. Future seasons come as a result of not only what is found in the outside investigation.
• A new Super Bowl XLVII site (yes, the game is supposed to be in New Orleans) is found.
  
• Any player or coach involved in the situation is banned from ever playing or coaching football at any level ever again. That's up to and including Payton on the coaching end, and any player materially contributing or benefiting from this program.
• If there is a "New Orleans Saints" going forward, it is a league-owned enterprise until a new ownership group which is consistent with the stated aims and goals vis-a-vis player safety and fair play (har de har har har) are found. Effectively, the NFL seizes the Saints and forces a sale.

Put bluntly:

The New Orleans Saints should be thrown out of the National Football League on the basis of the 50,000 pages of evidence with respect to their illegal bounty program which has resulted in career-ending injuries to, at minimum, two of the greatest quarterbacks of this era (and probably countless other players of lesser statures).

There is no sufficient penalty for the offenses which have been alleged and supposedly proven short of the cancellation of contests and the seizure of the Saints.

If you don't believe that the process of bounties goes on throughout the league (and that is certainly a "Great Wizard" to be ignored behind the curtain, per @NFLCommish), then you must conclude immediately that a significant criminal conspiracy was taking place under the color of the New Orleans Saints.

There is no way that, even if Tom Benson (the owner) didn't know, that Benson should not pay by losing his team -- he, by his inactions, has besmirched the NFL far more than even SpyGate could've, if you can believe that!

I mean, if you take a look at what's going on here, if you do what I think you have to do with respect to the players (within realistic NFLPA parameters, which is why you didn't hear suspensions -- which I think is a joke and all but exposes the fact that this DOES go on all the time), you're going to have to suspend the better number of players from the Saints defense -- as in, the Saints are going to have to find about 15-18 guys just to suit up a team for the first few games of the 2012 season.

(Don't believe me? There were TWENTY-SEVEN players allegedly involved in this, at least on the surface -- and that's just the Saints.)

How do you allow the Saints to take the field at all under such a scenario?

There's an easy answer to that, and it's not only why you will never see my punishments invoked, but one of the most frustrating truths about sports, these days:

The games themselves exist only as BUSINESS PROPOSITIONS. To cancel the games, even if the only fit punishment, cost the league and other teams enough money that the fragility of some of the other franchises gets further exposed.

The fact is that this should expose a massive criminal situation in which Williams is put in prison, and so are the better part of at least two dozen NFL players. How, in the name of "Protecting the Shield", Goodell can allow the Saints to continue as a franchise under these circumstances, I don't know -- except that professional sports are a business, and solely such.

This has been a frustration I've had for a very long time in a number of arenas. Since there now is no legal expectation of legal or fair conduct in the contests (Mayer vs. Belichick, New England Patriots, and NFL), actions like these must effectively go, at best, minimally-punished, because there's no way you can adequately sanction a company like this without closing it down.

Make no mistake: The New Orleans Saints are FINISHED as a meaningful National Football League franchise. If Saints fans want to see the reality under which the New Orleans Saints will go forward as a franchise (and this is something I believe Drew Brees has already identified, whether he states it or not), look at the Minnesota Timberwolves after the Joe Smith debacle.

(And yes, I would've thrown the Timberwolves out of the NBA for that little maneuver as well!)

The Timberwolves were a playoff team (a perennial first-round loser, yes -- but a playoff team), and basically were for three years afterward (probably only on the basis of Kevin Garnett being one of the league's manufactured "heroes" -- for which they apparently did get to one Western Conference Final).

The last seven seasons (before another "hero" emerged who got injured, Ricky Rubio from Spain)? One of the league's consummate jokes, as a result of the loss of five first-round draft picks.

The Timberwolves are not an NBA franchise at this point, and the Joe Smith debacle finished them. The same fate will befall the Saints -- and, given the nature of what the NFL is all about, I see this happening far more immediately.

Couple of other comments:

The NFL must move this year's Super Bowl. To think the Saints don't benefit from this is just laughable.

How is it going to go down well if the coach is suspended for a year and the players involved don't get similar suspensions?