IMHO the NFL dotted every i and crossed every t before it came down with its punishment.

The NFLPA deliberately told the players involved to not meet with or talk to the NFL during the investigation so they could take the tact of being a he said she said confrontation.

If the players involved are innocent, its time to prove that. Bring your evidence.

Why not hire Ron Kuby or other well know defense counsel.

Having a prosecutor do the job is like hiring the fox to guard the hen house.

As to others who rather make adolecent remarks about her looks, grow-up. Comments like those make you sound stupid, just saying.

As someone once posted on this site — one should be at least 21 to post comments — if not physically, mentally.

It was a golden opportunity. They have abundant lawsuits coming up. Let’s put on a play and show how wrong all of those lawsuits are. Ahh, we have something here in New Orleans. Let’s make them the star of our play. They’re in one of the smallest markets. We can’t go after the Giants, who publicly admitted trying to injure players. They’re one of our marquis teams in our home city. The Saints will do fine. The Saints, for their part, did not help themselves by angering the hanging judge.

They’ve never handed out their info from other investigations or findings; drug test results, tampering charges, etc. so why would they start now?

Anyone believing they are “owed” an explanation of the details the league found are living in a dream world, because the NFL doesn’t report to the fans or media.

NFL could have for free shared with the suspended players and public the magical secret evidence, but instead chose to spend a lot of money to get Mary Jo to agree with them about the secret evidence.

Mary Jo agreeing with NFL is no different than two opposing parties in court each having expert witnesses that completely disagree with one another, with each agreeing with the party paying them a large fee for their services.

Mary Jo has it all figured out, without speaking to the suspended players… NFL is counting on fans in general to be dumb enough to be influenced by statement of NFL’s paid counsel like Mary Jo, so much so that they forget about NFL not showing the public or even the suspended players and their counsel the alleged evidence.

That’s how it works right?

I’m really tired of hearing from the nflpa and the saints players on this. Look at it from a clear perspective. Would a buisness, in the public eye and scrutiny would a buisness suspend coaches and players millions and millions of dollars without proof. Roger goddell would not stake his reputation on such a large mistake.
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This has nothing to do with “mistakes.” This is a well orchestrated plan by the commissioner using the Saints as scapegoats to attempt to avoid league liability in the coming brain injury suits by former players. They found the Saints had a pay for performance program just as many other teams have had over the years, covered it up for three years, intentionally did not investigate to find out if other teams had similar programs – even other teams previously coached by Gregg Williams, tried to strong armed the players assn into going along with their investigation, and refuse to make any evidence available to back up their claims to the NFLPA or their player reps, and now hammer the Saints to show how tough they are on player safety. That is no “mistake.”

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You’ve just ruled out at all of the Usual insult hurling suspects – you know who you are.

Reality is, the people questioning evidence, strength of, or merely the existence of, may be in for a rude awakening.
The league may not be under any pressure to disclose the investigations findings to John Q. NFL FAN out here in cyber-land or any other land.
Should a case go to an actual trial, then perhaps we get to the actual legal process of discovery, highly unlikely though.
This attorney, having been a US Attorney prosecutor by trade, is perfectly logical to spearhead the process; as a prosecutor, she is in the best position to “size-up” a case’s evidential merits and a evaluate the strength of the case based upon the evidence collected during the investigations, ad the merits of the investigative process itself.
Having had to determine whether or not to bring presumably hundreds of cases to trial as a former prosecutor – seems she would be more than qualified to oversee the process.

BTW, people are complaining about the her being “bought and paid for” by the NFL.
Who the EFF else is going to enlist her services for the purpose of propriety and fair play?
The Tax-payers? Think not.

I still am perplexed at the nflpa aggressive approach in th defense of players who have committed the acts with not nearly as dedication to defend the players who were attacked.

It’s a shame on this day that we continue to talk about players like this instead of focusing on class acts like the signing of Eric legrand by the Bucs. The nflpa should understand that in this violent game where injuries like legrand’s can occur at anytime, there is no room for even the inference of intentionally injuring another and I challenge the nflpa that if indeed it is brought to light the specifics of the acts are indeed to injure players, that the nflpa ban players like vilma from there union and keep them out of the game themselves. Not doing so would be an embarressment to the millions of dollars they fought for the injured retired players
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Well said my man.

Answer a question or two, please. Why would the league conjure up this convoluted, scenario, conduct investigations, obtain admissions, hire an independent evaluator and mete out unprecedented punishment without legitimate justification? To what end, advantage or purpose? If you can propose a mature, rational, dispassionate, fact based, unbiased, agenda free, explanation without resort to personal attacks, many would love to hear what you have to say.

Anyone?

There is evidence and it has been made available to the NFLPA — they just decided not to go to New York and have a look at it. And of course, the signed confessions shouldn’t be considered evidence either apparently — or when the the Saints staff all read their lawyer written apologies for ‘inappropriate conduct’, you know the conduct they now are trying to say they didn’t do even though they already admitted publicly to doing….

I swear, the Saints and the NFLPA could not possibly have handled this situation any worse.

If they would have all just stood up and said, “We really screwed up big time. We let ourselves get caught up in winning at all costs and sacrificed our integrity, both individually and as a team. It was wrong. Completely wrong. And I am so sorry. Should punishment be deemed appropriate, I will accept it humbly and you can rest assured, I am and will continue to reflect on the error of my ways and work as hard as I possibly can to ensure that what happened here, never, ever happens again.” — people would have been pissed off and disappointed but would have forgiven them once they saw that they were actually changing their ways. But every day they continue to lie and deny they lose more fans, the goodwill of the nation of all fans and damage the company brand.

And I am STILL waiting for Tom Benson to be even a little upset that his staff and players have put his company/team in this horrible position.

This is not a judicial procedure. The League Office should play some poker: “submit or fines double” as a previous poster suggested.

Man up and take your medicine!

STOP THE LIES