Goodell and Tagliabue disagree with Saints punishment

I’ll be honest, I was shocked that former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue vacated the suspensions of four former and current New Orleans Saints players. The players must have felt the same way, because when it was announced last month by current commissioner Roger Goodell that Tagliabue would hear their appeal, they fought to have him to recuse himself. Lucky for them he didn’t. Tagliabue did uphold the major points of Goodell’s investigation. That a bounty program in fact did exist, that LB Jonathan Vilma, DE Anthony Hargrove and DE Will Smith engaged in conduct detrimental to the league (former Saints linebacker Scott Fujita was exonerated) and that Vilma offered a $10,000 bounty on Brett Favre before the 2009 NFC Championship game. But unlike Goodell, Tagliabue put the onus on the Saints organization, citing “broad organizational misconduct” and that the team’s coaches and managers, “led a deliberate, unprecedented and effective effort to obstruct the NFL’s investigation.” Th...