Unlike a couple of his colleagues whose names rhyme with “John Kerry” and “Mitt Romney,” Senator Dick Durbin won’t be flip-flopping.
On Wednesday, Durbin declared that he won’t follow through on plans to conduct a hearing on bounties in pro sports. And Durbin has now canceled a scheduled meeting with two of the lawyers representing former players in their concussion lawsuits against the league.
Durbin had intended to talk to former players about the NFL’s bounty culture.
And so, while the NFL has plenty of things to worry about (or more accurately “about which to worry,” but I usually don’t worry about esoteric rules like that), Commissioner Roger Goodell won’t have Congress exploring whether a bounty culture still exists.
Of course, no one knows whether the bounty culture still exists because the NFL hasn’t played a freaking game since the Saints bounty program first was exposed in March. There’s a chance that, moving forward, players will be more discreet about money changing hands for hits or plays or other actions that could be characterized as “bounties.”
And there’s also a chance that the NFL will embed its head back in the sand on such matters, which is where the NFL’s head seemed to be back in January 2010, when the league conducted what in hindsight appeared to be a very cursory investigation in response to the claim that the Saints had put a bounty on Brett Favre.