Osi Umenyiora was fined $20,000 for skipping a Wednesday morning press event, and he said on Thursday that he has no problem with that.
In fact, Umenyiora said, it makes perfect sense that the fine for skipping media access is substantial, because if it wasn’t players wouldn’t do it.
“It makes sense because the NFL is a business, you understand,” Umenyiora said. “Players are the product, and the fans are the customers. The only way that we can reach them is through you guys, the media, so we have to be responsible and speak to the people. If it was like a $1,000 fine or something like that, most of the people they will laugh at it. They wouldn’t even come downstairs and talk, but you make the fine substantial enough it is going to make people want to show up.”
Asked if he was sorry, Umenyiora said he was sorry to lose $20,000, but he did find it surprising that he had to go to another media event less than 24 hours after Media Day -- when the Giants hadn’t even had a practice in the interim.
“It cost me a lot of money, I am sorry about that,” Umenyiora said. “At the end of the day I don’t really know what I could have discussed with you guys between Tuesday’s media day and Wednesday morning. It is not like we had a practice or anything like that. At the end of the day, I understand why they did it and I am okay with it.”
Umenyiora said he didn’t oversleep on Wednesday morning and that he was awake and with family in Indianapolis, thinking he had the morning off and leaving his phone behind. He didn’t know what happened until he returned to the team hotel and saw how many messages he had.