In the immortal words of Jack Lambert. “Let,s put dresses on all of them”. Football is a contact sport. PERIOD!
I remember the game Dungy spoke of. Don’t know why I remember it, but I do, and yes, Peyton was hit savagely in that game. If the charges against Williams are true, then he and the players who participated should be permanently banned from the game. There is a difference between playing the game and looking to intentionally cause another player physical harm.
I was a fan of the Detroit Pistons during the Bad Boy era. Did they have some dirty players, like Mahorn and Laimbeer and Rodman? Yup. But they couldn't get away with anything that the refs didn't let them get away with.
I remember when Robert Parrish slapped Bill Laimbeer to the floor in front of God and everybody, and the refs didn't call a foul. Things even out.
I think that was the golden era of the NBA. There was no shaking hands and kissy-face after the game. Those teams hated each other, which made for a lot more drama.
Last year, Justin Upton of the AZ Diamondbacks led the league in Hit By Pitch. They weren't just nicking him, they were hitting him in the spine, in the head, in the kidneys. Brutal. Because he was the best hitter on the team, and they were testing him. Umps should have thrown some of those pitchers out. But they didn't. He was being tested.
Here is the play in 2006. It looks pretty deliberate and coordinated.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nBxHse5s74&feature=youtube_gdata_player
There is a big difference between a clean, hard, but fair hit and one designed to injure someone. Remember, even on a sports field, battery is still against the law.
(1) i'm curious about the anonymous saints player who told yahoo sports that williams said
"If you cut the snake's head off, the body will die. It was made clear that he was talking about not just running backs who turned their heads the opposite way and how they would go down, but also about other stars on offense that were the best players on that team."
the snake/head expression is common when used in other ways, such as taking out the key man. but that doesn't make complete sense in the context of the rest of the comment. what's the part about turned heads and how they would go down? is it about hitting them when their heads are turned? even that doesn't make perfect sense in the context. is it about going for the head? i hate to think that's the case - especially if you note the point below, that the bounty program may have included extra payments for sending somebody to the hospital.
(2) i just noticed that after the game in which peyton manning took this hit (well, this grab and pull), manning said “The guy wouldn’t let go of my head. I looked at my helmet to see if my head was in it.” phillip daniels - the guy who 'wouldn't let go' of manning's head, was fined $5k for the hit. what is fascinating is the daniels' choice of words when he was approached by the media for a quote on the bounty program in other, non-manning, stories. daniels is currently the redskins' director of player development. daniels said:
"I think it is wrong the way they're trying to paint [Williams]. He never told us to go out there and break a guy's neck or break a guy's leg. It was all in the context of a good, hard football."
unless somebody mentioned manning to williams as part of the question, it was odd that daniels chose to say "break a guy's neck" when he was asked about williams' bounty program, given what daniels did to manning while playing under williams.
(3) some sources are saying that the bonuses went up to as much as $8,000 for certain hits. the median nfl salary is $777,000 dollars; or $38,850/game, counting pre-season; the average is $1.9 million, or about $95,000 per game); . $8K (or even $1,000 or $1,500) doesn't sound as small in proportion to salary as some people are making out - at least not for the average player.
(4) we've heard there were bonuses for knocking people out of games or sending them off on carts. some sources are saying there was also a bonus level for sending somebody to the hospital. i haven't seen the bounty pool structure (and it may have changed from time to time).
(4) the bounty pool wasn't just an internal saints thing. michael ornstein, the marketing agent (convicted of fraud) who had ties to reggie bush and saints' coach sean payton, contributed $10,000 to a bounty fund for opposing quarterbacks in 2009, at contributed additional money at least twice more. and he wrote an email about the bounty fund to payton.
(5) football is a brutal game and i've heard stories since my youth of players trying to knock opposing players out of of game. anything, however, you hear people screaming 'everybody does it' you have to consider that 'it' often remains illegal (within the rules of the game or at law) even if everybody does it, and that there are proportionalities involved. it's one thing to try to hit a guy so hard he flinches the next time he goes across the middle. it's a different level when you try and knock him out or to send him out on a cart. if another tier was trying to send him to the hospital, then that's another level. it's another thing to pay people to do it, and to be caught doing and and to continue doing it when you were told to stop.
and if - if - you were paying to send people to the hospital as well as knocking them out of the game and if - if - you specifically talked about going for the head . . . then i view the peyton manning hit in an interesting new light.
just thoughts.
I have a hunch that Williams who was just hired by Jeff Fisher and the Rams may be unemployed soon.