I’m a little fuzzy on the NFL math. Let’s see…James Harrison gets banged for $5,000 for uprooting Vince Young. Then it jumps to $75,000 for hitting Massaquoi in the course of a play. For, I believe it was called, being a repeat offender. The fact that James says he tries to hurt guys supposedly factored into the fine.
Richard Seymour belts Ben. $25,000 for the knockdown. Last year Seymour got hit-up by NFL Charities for $7,500 for pulling Ryan Clady’s hair in Denver, and $10,000 for hitting Jerome Harrison after the whistle (sound familiar?) in Cleveland. When does a three-peat offender go for less than a repeat offender?
Does it not enter into the Park Avenue NFL headquarters thinking when Raiders safety Mike Mitchell says after the game that they (Raiders) try to turn everything into a streetfight? Or when Seymour says it was a “natural reaction” to slug Ben? Is there a scale or is somebody just making up this stuff as they go along?
Does somebody’s star-status figure into the equation? Decking a Ben gets you $25,000 but a Tom Brady pelt on your wall will set you back 50-75,000 G’s and maybe some down time?
I don’t live in a glass house. I have doled out some bucks to NFL Charities myself during my career. I’m not all worked up over the fact that somebody got slugged.
Back in the day, off-setting penalties would be called, everybody goes back to work, maybe a little vigilante-ism, but at the end of the day justice is usually served and life moves on.
What i don’t like is the uneven p(l)aying field that’s starting to emerge.
