"Fire Them All" (Saints)

“Fire them all” is what the newspaper in New Orleans said today. “Them” is the coaching staff of the New Orleans Saints professional football team. Why would a local newspaper want the coaching staff dumped? Maybe you haven’t heard but the National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell laid down some harsh punishments to the Saints team: (loss of draft picks and fines), head coach Sean Payton (suspended for a year with total loss of pay, estimated to be 7+ million dollars), former defensive coordinator coach Greg Williams (suspended indefinitely) and assistant coach Joe Vitte (6 games or 40% of a year’s pay), and the General Manager Mickey Loomis (8 games, who knows how much money that represents). Player fines and suspensions are soon to be forthcoming. This is the harshest set of penalties meted out in the NFL ever.

Of course fan reaction is mixed. In Louisiana, most fans feel like they are one of Custer’s men at The Little Big Horn. Boy do they howl and complain about being excessively picked on and abused. I wonder if the victims the Saints defensive players maimed feel picked on and abused. Ya think? Other fans have views like, I don’t think the punishment fits the crime, and what about “spy gate”? To them football is a violent sport; a Darwinian exercise of survival of the meanest. Some fans are just as outraged on the other side of the argument. They don’t understand why the General Manager wasn't summarily fired and lifetime suspensions meted for the coaches. The debate continues.

One thing there is no debate about is what happened. I say this because Greg Williams, Joe Vitte, and Mickey Loomis all admitted guilt. Williams and Vitte and made public apologies. These 2 coaches, with the approval of their head coach and general manager, had a “bounty” system. In this game within a game, defensive players that took opposing players out of a game got bonus money. Career ending injuries to opposing players paid more. Helped off the field didn’t pay as much because the player might return. Saint players bragged about maiming other players. They put Arizona Cardinal QB Kurt Warner out of the league. They significantly contributed to the ending of the playing career of Brett Favre (not even father time it seemed could do that). How many other players were hospitalized, some never to return to the game during the three years the bounty system was in place?

The point is: this intent to injure program went on for 3 years that the league knows of. The league got wind of what was going on after about 1 ½ seasons and told the Saints owner and General Manager to “clean it up”, to stop it. Loomis (GM) told the NFL that he had stopped "it" but of course not only did they not stop it but the same Mr. Loomis encouraged it to continue. Continue it did and these dumb-asses didn’t even realize that all the time they thought they were getting away with it; the league was compiling videotape of their hits, talking to people, investigating. To show you the level of hubris the head coach Sean Payton had, he flew to New York just last week, last week for God’s sake and lied to the Commissioner saying he knew nothing about what had happened. Imagine the look on this arrogant coach's face when the Commissioner confronted him with the facts that yes he did.

So here is the deal, the Saints defensive staff led by former head coach of the Buffalo Bills (they should check the footage of that team while he was coach there) Greg Williams creates a bounty system, with the approval of the head Coach and GM, to pay Saint defensive players bonus cash for injuring opposing players enough to get them out of a game, hospitalized or have career ending injuries. The players were offered hundreds and in some cases thousands of dollars to maim other players. The players are caught on tape bragging about their “hits”. Bragging about ruining other players, teaming up to destroy ligaments, break bones, sprain necks, and god only knows what else. Sean Payton knew about it, condoned it and for all we know contributed money to the pot. Greg Williams ran the “pay for maim plan” and Joe Vitte also contributed, and encouraged it. Mickey Loomis, the General Manager, also knew and in fact when told to put an end to it lied to the League office about it. Now why in the world would a team do such a thing? Here is why:

The New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl in the second year of the bounty program and were in the playoffs the year before winning the bowl and the year after. Winning is why these players went well beyond the already violent sport. To win at all costs. Of course it wasn’t their costs! It was Kurt Warner’s cost (hospitalized for months and walks with a limp today). It’s many other players "costs". Adulation, restoring pride to New Orleans, huge payouts for playoff wins and so forth is what the Saint’s players and staff received. While the Saints were holding up the Super Bowl trophy their victims were holding up x-rays, and looking at MRI’s.

To the victor go the spoils, if you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying, winner take all, all or nothing, king on the mountain are just some of the outward expressions of competition at its worst. This kind of play isn’t competition; it’s a train-wreck.

Some would point out “spy gate”, another scandal in the NFL. Cheating by the New England Patriots or you can point to: Danny Almonte winning the Little League World Series by being too old to pitch at that level, the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, Bobby Thompson being tipped as to what pitch was coming in his historic 1951 “shot heard round the world”. All these and a gazillion more examples of cheating, lying and subterfuge have always been in sports, and when found out the perpetrators should be punished. Vacate championships, ban players from playing and fine players, coaches and management if you have to BUT what the Saints did is substantially different.

It wasn’t cheating; they didn’t steal signs or plays, nudge the ball forward, or play with one too many men on the field. NO! They systematically got together and agreed to hurt people, maim people, put people in the hospital and end grown men’s livelihoods. They became hit squads, assassins, thugs disguised as “saints”. Who is to say someone couldn’t have become a quadriplegic from one of their blindside hits, or even died on the field? This stupid thinking isn’t new world it’s old world as old as it gets. Loomis, Payton, Williams, Vitte, and the 22-28 players got off or will get off lucky. They can thank their lucky stars Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis isn’t still alive and a Commissioner. If he were the NFL Commissioner, these managers, coaches and players would be plying their trade in the semi-pro ranks for the rest of their lives.

Shoeless Joe Jackson has the 3rd highest lifetime batting average in over 100 years of professional baseball and Mountain Landis tossed him out of professional baseball as quickly as flipping off a light switch. If he were the NFL Commissioner today, instead of Goodell, he would have “fired them all”.