Primarily if you are a fervent and/or fanatical NFL fan.
Suspended New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton will have a lot of free time in the upcoming season -- he's out of the game for the entire 2012 campaign, and he's $5.8 million lighter in the pocket after Roger Goodell told him that he was not needed this year as a result of BountyGate. Fox Sports would like to fill Payton's Sundays by making an analyst for the network's NFL broadcasts.
"Our feeling about Sean is that he's bright, articulate and obviously contemporary," said Lou D'Ermilio, FOX's senior vice president for communications in a statement. "Any network with NFL rights would have to consider it."
While the league can prevent Payton from finding gainful employment in a coaching or administrative position until his one-year suspension is done, there's no mandate to keep him out of the booth.
"He is suspended from the NFL for the season," the league said in a statement to The New York Times. "His involvement in any non-NFL employment or business matters is not our decision." [NFL.com]
My initial reaction to this story can be summed up in two words.
Pissed off.
Actually, one word if you accept pissed as the shortened version of pissed off and don't automatically read it as the British expression for drunk.
But I digress.
As a parent, stepparent, grandparent, et al, I am, like many of you, most blatantly aware of how difficult it is, in an increasingly permissive society, to teach children lessons, moral and/or otherwise, that have any lasting impact.
And, forgive me all my dedicated English grammar teachers of decades past, but teaching kids to do the right thing ain't made any easier when tree stumps like Fox Sports pull shit like this.
Put more succinctly...what is the point of punishing someone for a transgression of the punishment's effect is neutralized?
Put more basically, if Sean Payton committed a transgression and his punishment was to be denied Hershey Bars for a year, said punishment would be pointless if he were allowed to chow down on Reese's Cups instead.
And, get ready fervent NFL'ers, here comes the blasphemy.
Isn't the whole, foundational point of competitive sports to teach our children the critical life lessons of sportsmanship, fair play, honesty, accountability.....
....okay, who are we kidding?
Competitive professional sports hasn't been about any of those qualities for a long, long time.
If it was, Fox Sports would have endorsed those qualities....
...rather than middle finger them by offering Payton a gig for the suspension year.
And, get ready NFL fervents, for one more jab.
If Sean Payton has any class at all, he'll turn it down.
And show future generations of football players that when you break a rule, there's a price you have to pay.
And scarfing down the chocolate your neighbor sneaks to you because mom and dad have cut you off doesn't even come close to paying that price.
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