Ben Roethlisberger happened to hook up with a gold-digging chick without her jealous, vindictive friends and the NFL suspended him 6 games.
Michael Vick systematically tortured furry little dogs to death after events of his interstate gambling ring and received a 2 game suspension.
THE NFL IS OUT TO GET THE STEELERS!
God damn it do I hate this argument. And it's a relatively common argument. "Vick killed dogs and got 2 games, while Ben did nothing and got 6. What the f is up with that? That's not fair".
I hate it. Hate, hate, hate. Vick lost just about every dollar he had, his career as arguably the most popular player in the NFL and two years of his life to prison, and the fact that Goodell only gave him two games shows that there is some sort of conspiracy? Or that the NFL suspensions are completely out of whack?
You can make an argument that Sheriff Goodell's suspensions are arbitrary and often not fitting, but don't cite Vick and expect to keep my attention. Vick did two years in jail. He lost almost everything. And now, just because he only got two games on top of that, he got off lucky? You don't think that the two years in prison may have shaken him up a bit? That he could not have been sufficiently mollified to Goodell's liking?
I'm looking at Vick's suspension as a 34-game suspension. The fact that Goodell obviously weighed in the jail time that Vick was forced to do when determining NFL discipline does NOT show a conspiracy against the Steelers, whether you believe Ben committed a crime or not. Both did some Shield tarnishing. That's what Goodell is looking at. Goodell felt Ben's behavior was out of control and punished him to reign him in. If Vick didn't go to jail, do you think that he would have only been given two games? Please. I bet he would have gotten the full year. Same goes for Donte' Stallworth. If he would have gotten a year in jail, do you think that Goodell still would have added a full year from the NFL on top of it?
Vick's two games to Ben's six games does not show a lack of fairness. Or a conspiracy. Or a belief that killing dogs is ok while getting BJs in restrooms is absolutely not (or giving, in Jamal Anderson's case). This is disregarding the probable belief of many that one sexual assault on a human is worse than the electrocution of 100 dogs. Vick did a fuckload of time. Ben did not. The legal system punished Vick for sullying the shield. It did not do so to Ben.
So you can tell me that the punishments meted out by the NFL are so arbitrary and the guidelines so vague that they do a disservice to the league's image. And that suspending Roethlisberger sets a poor precedent. That I'll listen to. But if you try to tell me that this shows that the NFL puts dog murder on the back-burner behind public indecency, I'll going to tell you to stop. And if you try to suggest that this exposes the NFL conspiracy against the Steelers, then I'm going to walk away.
1 comment:
They are separate cases and must be evaluated that way. I still maintain that Ben, lacking any arrest or conviction, is being punished for being an asshole in public. If every NFL player who has been an asshole in public were suspended, there wouldn't be enough players left to play on Sunday.
Post a Comment