This wasn’t the best morning for Roger Goodell. Hours after former Viking Jimmy Kennedy practically ran out of ways to call the NFL’s commissioner a “liar,”Goodell announced that he would be recusing himself from hearing the Saints’ latest bounty appeal. Taking over? Wait a second … good God, that’s Paul Tagliabue’s music! Can you remember another commissioner having his objectivity questioned so vociferously that he had to enlist his former boss to clean up his mess? Me neither.
And you wonder why Goodell might be wearing the “Most Dangerously Incompetent Commissioner in Sports” championship belt for the foreseeable future, even as his rival commissioners keep halfheartedly trying to steal it. David Stern waited until the last minute to unveil his ambitious anti-flopping agenda — his annual early-October headline grab, as mandated by the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement. Unsatisfied with the public reaction, the Notorious D.J.S. upped the stakes with a hurried crackdown on pregame handshakes and chest-bumps. Wait, what?1 Meanwhile, Bud Selig keeps refusing to expand instant replay’s parameters, if only because it’s crucial that we keep pretending that every playoff baseball game is being played in 1923. And then there’s Gary Bruce Bettman, the serial killer of the National Hockey League, someone who keeps murdering games and seasons without being caught. He’s only missing a catchy/creepy nickname like the Zamboni Killer or the Canadian Bogeyman.
Read the entire Grantland article at http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8524001/a-hierarchy-hypocrites
For nearly a month, Will Smith has had the chance to look up at a banner in the New Orleans Saints practice facility, one that shows head coach Sean Payton glaring down and bearing the words “Do Your Job.”
