And it's even worse than I first thought...

This Sunday just became Open Season for head-hunting in the NFL.

What's Goodell going to do, given this ruling?  Any suspension he gives under the present system will be overturned with this ruling as precedent.  That and the replacement refs equals BIG TROUBLE.

Here's something to make it worse:  The NFL has billions of dollars at stake for letting this stand!!

Why?

If the NFL allows this ruling to stand, they can then turn around to all the former players suing for concussions and state that the NFL can do nothing to protect them, using THIS RULING as legal precedent!  The NFL could successfully use this ruling to toss all of the concussion lawsuits!

And as disgusting as this Bounty-Gate ruling is, the fact is this ruling renders the entire current NFL discipline process (where the Commissioner is Judge, Jury, and Executioner) illegal.

Hence, it would be similar to Leong v. Square Enix.  One of the reasons by which the court was able to strike down the lawsuit against the creators and administration of Final Fantasy XI was that the action could not be re-dressable by a court decision nor traced to an illegal act by the company.

If the NFL's discipline system is illegal, then the NFL had no authority to discipline players under that system for player-safety incidents.  Therefore, not only could the league be off the hook because the only illegal acts the league was committing were attempts (farcical or otherwise) to redress the issue, but also that the court can't step in and do it themselves.

I fully expect Sean Payton on the sidelines by about Week 4.

And, Mr. Goodell, bounties are QUITE ACCEPTABLE in the NFL, until you show otherwise.

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Oh, and one more thing (hat-tip to anonymous friend for pointing it out to me again!):

The league has asked the remaining home teams to observe a moment of silence for deceased owner Art Modell.

That's the Good News.

The Bad News is that one of the games this week is in Cleveland.

Bottle-Gate might be the least of their worries after this one.

And don't think obscene signs are out of the question.  ESPN just saw some of that ugliness in a high-school game in Alabama that day, giving a homophobic sign airtime before they probably realized what was going on!

(Care, assholes, to tell that to the Minnesota Vikings?  Thought so.)