Saturday, November 14, 2009

This Week In Openly Ridiculous Fines in the NFL

Chad Ochocinco was fined $20K for what seemed like a pretty light-hearted joke, in which he "attempted to bribe" an official with a $1 bill. It was a silly, harmless thing for Chad to do, and once again, the NFL stepped on him hard. Following last week's chin strap thing, it is easy to wonder if Chad isn't doing this sort of thing on purpose--a one man crusade to find the silly ways of being fined.

Meanwhile, Eric Weddle, Safety for the Chargers, was fined $7500 for helmet to helmet contact on a defenseless receiver. You might think that carrying a $1 bill onto the field would be less cause for concern than a potential concussion/major head injury type hit, but you would be wrong, if the NFL fining structure is any guide. We had another nice demonstration of the structure of fining in the fudgefest from Thursday.

Two Bears were fined last week--Tommie Harris, predictably enough, for punching a dude in the head whilst said dude was on the ground. Punching a dude in the helmet should be at least a $10K fine for stupidity. You are punching a dude's head, but it is encased in expensive armor. And your hands are not. That's just fucking stupid. Harris was ticketed $7500. In the same game, Jay Cutler was fined for being mean to an official. He did not punch that official, mind you. He was fined $20K.

So there you have it--being mean to and or joking around with an NFL official is more than twice as bad as punching an opponent, or using your head as a weapon on a guy who is in the air and defenseless. (Wearing the wrong color chinstrap is also worse than punching a guy, just not as worse.)

The NFL Powers-That-Be seem really set on killing the Golden Goose, and maybe angrily fucking the corpse of the Golden Goose afterwards. I'm not saying that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is a hate-based Avarian Necrophiliac. I'm just saying that if you have a goose that you love and treasure, and Roger Goodell comes around--keep your goose safe.

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