Brady case shows pro sports needs better rules and process for discipline
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/09/2015 (3129 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
If the Tom Brady case teaches us anything it’s that the dishing out of discipline in pro sports needs to have more rules governing its application, along with a more strict adherence to due process.
The corner office can no longer call the shots and consider its ruling above reproach. In fact, in many cases, commissioners should be recusing themselves and turning the act of dispensing discipline to an independent party.
The days of league offices running roughshod over players is past. Players and their associations have money and the will to be litigious. They can and will defend their rights.
Brady wasn’t afraid of commissioner Roger Goodell and the NFL. He had the means to fight and he won. Mike Richards has seen his contract voided by the Los Angeles Kings and the NHL in an overt act of opportunism. Richards and the NHLPA are grieving the process and they’ll likely win.
Expect this to become the trend, not an aberration. The goalposts have moved. The players have adapted and now the leagues must as well.
North America’s major sports leagues have bargained for the right to hand out discipline. But the world has changed and these have become far more public and complex matters.
The increased number of incidences, the money involved and the automatic transparency created by omnipresent media have made discipline an unwieldy monster. Too much for leagues to handle with efficiency and any real sense of fairness.
The CBAs may suggest it’s within the commissioner’s purview to act but common sense does not. Get out of law and order and back to the business of games.
Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank told the Atlanta Constitution-Journal as much Thursday.
“It’s not healthy for the NFL to be in the kind of litigious position that it’s been for last several years,” Blank said. “I think that the commissioner is working hard to hold up the respect and integrity of the game, the competitive balance of the game and the shield. Having said that, I think we have to find ways to get to a better place sooner with the NFLPA than the process that we’ve gone through.
“This Deflategate thing which isn’t about Deflategate any longer, it’s about what has been collectively negotiated for decades in terms of the commissioner’s responsibility in terms of disciplining players. If we have to look at that differently in today’s light, in today’s environment, as an ownership group we should be prepared to do that. The commissioner should be prepared to do that…I don’t think (the commissioner’s right to handle discipline) should be re-bargained in a federal court. Having said that, I think the commissioner and the ownership around the league have to be prepared to look at things, look at change and change may be appropriate.”
The NFL and its handling of Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson, Greg Hardy and Brady come immediately to mind. But in the NHL — where players charged with criminal offences find their files handled with the value of their contracts and current ability weighed into the equation — there is just as much to view with jaundice.
The relationship between the commissioner’s office and the players in any league is adversarial. Commissioners lock out players and battle with their associations over collective bargaining agreements. They do the bidding of their owners. They are in no way independent.
Goodell ignored due process in suspending Brady and has now had that ban overturned in a court of law. The Brady ruling splashed heavy on the surface but the upcoming Richards’ grievance will create far deeper undercurrents.
Richards had his contract voided by the Kings after he was arrested at the border for possession of a controlled substance.
The move appears motivated by the Kings’ desire to get out from under a bad contract. They didn’t void the contract of wife-beater Slava Voynov because they still consider him, unlike the regressing Richards, to be a player of value.
The NHL can’t allow such transparent inconsistencies in the application of its policies to continue.
Frankly, it’s hard to understand why any league would want to have to deal with these situations.
Code of conduct has stepped to the forefront in North American sports leagues. But teams can’t cherry pick from one situation to another. And players can’t be the only ones deprived of earning a living.
If you’re going to void Richards’ contract and deprive him of the remaining $22 million he’s owed, then owners have to be held to the same standard.
It’s a different league but when Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay was arrested for a DUI and possession of a controlled substance he didn’t have his franchise revoked. He was handed a six-game ban and fined $500,000.
The values may be widely disparate but they are relative in what they mean to the individual. The rest of Richards’ contract is just as important to him as the Colts franchise is to Irsay.
Should we expect NHL commissioner Gary Bettman to discipline the next one of his owners to become ensnared in a criminal matter? To consider revoking a franchise? Of course not.
Code of conduct needs to be clearly laid out and followed strictly and not administered on a case-by-case basis.
The NHL’s assertion that its players are good guys and therefore a code of conduct policy isn’t needed is both naive and reckless.
From this summer alone we can glean that the NHL, like any other workplace in the world, has domestic abuse and substance abuse issues. No other conclusion can be reached.
Goodell’s constant mishandling of off-field discipline should be a warning to his commissioner colleagues.
Pro sports leagues aren’t equipped to handle this end of the business and they should get out of it altogether.
Twitter: @garylawless