Mutiny on the SS Bounty

The New Orleans Saints have been accused by the NFL of having a bounty system in place. They had a pool of $50,000 and payoffs were made for inflicting game-ending injuries on targeted players, including Brett Favre and Kurt Warner. "Knockouts," in which a player was knocked out of the game, were worth $1,500 and "cart-offs," in which players had to be helped off the field, were worth $1,000. Payments doubled or tripled for the playoffs.
Gregg Williams has admitted to running the ring and he may have been doing it in previous jobs with the Redskins and Bills as well.
Here’s why this is a big deal:
Player safety is an important issue for the NFL. The league can’t say it is serious about protecting its players if it allows teams to maintain a program offering incentives to seriously injure opposing players. And the players look very hypocritical here. They want lifetime unlimited health care, but they also want to be able to go out and there and kill and maim each other. And complain about any changes designed to make the game safer. The league admittedly is serving two masters trying to profit from the violence inherent in the game while also trying to make changes to protect the players.
Here’s why this is not such a big deal:
I doubt it had any appreciable impact on the way the players played the game. They will always play the game aggressively; they will always hit the quarterback and hit him hard. But it would be foolish to risk a 15-yard penalty and a huge fine to blatantly try to injure someone in order to pick up a $1500 bounty. The goal is just to create an aggressive attitude, to demonstrate how important it is to be physical. I don’t think anyone really did want to serious injure another player.
But it does set a dangerous precedent. Say Brett Favre or Kurt Warner suffered a serious career-ending and life-alerting injury. And then it came out that a player was paid to deliver such a blow. Wouldn’t the team and the league be on the hook for a huge amount of money?
And the worst part of all of this is that the Saints were warned. Tom Benson told GM Mickey Loomis to stop this practice and presumably the news was spread throughout the organization, and then ignored.
I expect a season-long ban for Williams, 8 games for Sean Payton and a million dollar fine plus the loss of a 1st round draft pick for the organization.
The question that keeps popping up is whether Bounty-gate is worse than Spy-gate. I can’t pick one. Spy-gate is worse for the integrity of the league because competition was affected. But on a moral level it’s a lot worse to purposely try to injure someone than it is to cheat at a game.