Goodell consolidating his power over football world - Ingles

It will comfort the law-and-order types to know that Roger Goodell, emperor of football, considers himself eligible to punish workers in his league before they become workers in his league.

By suspending Terrelle Pryor for five games — thus making Goodell a muscle in the enforcement arm of the NCAA — even before he is drafted into the NFL, the commissioner is sending a deterrent to those collegiate athletes who might be inclined to swap T-shirts for a new tattoo. You can almost hear the splashes those University of Miami players are making as they leap overboard from a booster’s flooze cruise.

What is next? Will Goodell counsel a former star, fresh out of prison, to avoid a possible starting job in, say, Buffalo in order to go be the third-string guy in, say, Philadelphia?

Wait. Didn’t that already happen?

According to Michael Vick, in a post-prison meeting Goodell persuaded him not to take a potential starting job in Buffalo, or at least a backup job in Cincinnati, but to go to Philly, where Donovan McNabb and Kevin Kolb were a firm 1-2 on the charts.

It doesn’t require much of a leap to guess that the commish wanted to see the dogfighting guy buried on the bench somewhere on a good team, where the focus would be far away from him and the attendant embarrassment his very presence caused the league.

Vick has since backpedalled on his comments, after he realized that his statements to GQ magazine meant the commissioner was doing the work of both player agent and general manager. The league harrumphed that “the commissioner would never steer players to or away from particular teams and did not do so in this case.’’

Sure. But the damage is done. Bills fans, at least some of them, are outraged that a potential megastar was prevented from joining their team, although the way it has (or certainly could) work out with Ryan Fitzpatrick, all pain might not be permanent. Things also happened in Philadelphia, where McNabb was traded and Kolb was hurt, and Vick quickly regained his star status, to the point his jersey became the best-selling souvenir shirt in the country. All, or most, apparently was forgiven and the usual media sycophants began spinning the Michael-is-just-misunderstood stories.

Now along comes Pryor, whose ability to earn a living was limited by the NCAA, the same NCAA that was making enormous sums on his back while he was quarterbacking Ohio State. When that Tattoogate blew up and the coach, Jim Tressel, was subsequently fired for having tried to cover it up, Pryor was chosen by the school to carry the disciplinary can. His five-game suspension turned into permanent ineligibility and a five-year ban from campus. That naturally sent him to the NFL supplementary draft.

Even though he has broken no laws and no NFL regulations, Goodell still decided to whack him with a suspension, explaining it with a vague suggestion that Pryor upset “the integrity of the eligibility rules for the NFL draft.’’

That is one way to look at it. The other is that Goodell has awarded himself jurisdiction over enforcement of NCAA violations for incoming rookies. No wonder the players’ association is leery of all this. Can he make punishment retroactive? Can he now discipline, say, Reggie Bush for his college crookedness? Can he throw a blanket suspension on incoming University of Miami players when that school gets its sanctions, as it surely will?

Goodell wouldn’t see that he has opened a can (or two) of worms. Collective bargaining agreements may come and go, but he clearly thinks he has absolute power to dictate as he sees fit. Worst of all, he probably has it. This article was written by Dave Perkins and appeared in The Toronto Star.