NFL suspensions are ridiculous; should learn from the MLB

[82nd Airborne]

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/mlb-officially-removes-marijuana-from-banned-substances-list-for-baseball-players/

MLB Officially Removes Marijuana From Banned Substances List For Baseball Players

Major League Baseball (MLB) and the MLB players union announced on Thursday that they have reached an agreement to remove marijuana from the list of banned substances and will begin to treat its consumption by players in the same way that  alcohol use is handled.

The agreement is the product of negotiations on the league’s drug policy, with both parties agreeing that steps must be taken to handle drug misuse through a treatment-focused model, rather than by simply imposing penalties.

With that, MLB will also start to test for opioids and cocaine, and players who test positive will be referred to treatment. Only those who refuse the treatment program will be penalized.

The cannabis change reflects an attempt to modernize the league’s drug policy as more states move to enact legalization.

“Going forward, marijuana-related conduct will be treated the same as alcohol-related conduct under the Parties’ Joint Treatment Program for Alcohol-Related and Off-Field Violent Conduct, which provides for mandatory evaluation, voluntary treatment and the possibility of discipline by a Player’s Club or the Commissioner’s Office in response to certain conduct involving Natural Cannabinoids,” MLB said in a press release.

In other words, players will only face discipline for violations related to unsanctioned conduct while under the influence, rather than simply for testing positive for THC. Previously, a positive test resulted in mandatory treatment, and failure to comply was punishable by a fine of up to $35,000.

At the same time, MLB is adding several substances to its list of drugs that will be tested: synthetic cannabinoids, cocaine and opioids including fentanyl.

Additionally, players will be required to participate in educational programs on “the dangers of opioid pain medications and practical approaches to marijuana.” The programs will focus on “evidence-based and health-first approaches based on reputable science and sound principles of public health and safety.”

The changes will take effect beginning with 2020 Spring Training.

“In agreeing to these modifications to the Program, MLB and the MLBPA continue to favor a treatment-based approach to Drugs of Abuse, with a particular emphasis on protecting Players from lethal and addictive substances, and providing effective and confidential care and support to Players who need it,” MLB said.

The drug policy shift comes after 27-year-old Anaheim Angels player Tyler Skaggs died of an opioid overdose, prompting a reevaluation of how the league can respond to the opioid crisis.

“The opioid epidemic in our country is an issue of significant concern to Major League Baseball,” MLB Deputy Commissioner Dan Halem said. “It is our hope that this agreement—which is based on principles of prevention, treatment, awareness and education—will help protect the health and safety of our Players.”

“It is our collective hope that this agreement will help raise public awareness on the risks and dangers of opioid medications and contribute positively to a national conversation about this important topic,” he said.

White House Drug Czar Jim Carroll said “[w]e applaud the efforts of both Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association to prioritize treatment over punishment” and that this “historic agreement is an example of how we can all work toward a common goal and save more of our friends, family members, and neighbors from dying of a drug overdose.”

“By coming together, the parties are implementing positive change that has the potential to save lives,” he said.

While MLB has developed a reputation as being progressive in its drug policy decisions, other sports leagues have declined to take responsive action.

Earlier this year, the PGA announced that its golfers cannot use CBD, regardless of the federal legalization of hemp and its derivatives under the 2018 Farm Bill. The NFL reduced its marijuana penalty in 2014, but has made no changes to its cannabis policy since.

The World Anti Doping Agency, on the other hand, said in 2017 that athletes can use CBD.

[jetstream23]

[JustInFudge]

Smart of the MLB.  It's the miracle plant.

Speaking of suspensions and fines and punishment, I guess the NFL is literally not even going to remotely address the fact the Patriots got caught cheating again?  That whole thing has just disappeared. 

 

 

[Jetsfan80]

3 minutes ago, JiF said:

Smart of the MLB.  It's the miracle plant.

Speaking of suspensions and fines and punishment, I guess the NFL is literally not even going to remotely address the fact the Patriots got caught cheating again?  That whole thing has just disappeared. 

This is the latest the Patriots homer news side of things.  The Boston media is disgusting.  But even they recognize Goodell might come down hard on the Pats.  We'll see.

 

https://boston.cbslocal.com/2020/01/30/roger-goodell-message-to-patriots-ominous-nfl-extends-investigation-video/

 

Roger Goodell’s Message To Patriots Sounded Ominous, As NFL Extends Unnecessary Investigation

 

By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston

BOSTON (CBS) — When news first broke that a Patriots employee was caught red-handed filming the Bengals’ sideline in early December, the sharks came out immediately. Sensing some blood in the water, and knowing there’s no meatier story than a Patriots CHEATING scandal, all of the league’s heavy hitter reporters threw up their dorsal fins and went on some deep dives looking for some juice.

They came up empty.

And now, almost eight weeks later, the story has barely advanced an inch since Jay Glazer got a hold of the footage — footage which was exactly what the Patriots admitted to having just a day after the story initially broke. To anyone with any sense at all, the videographer clearly made a mistake. Had he been surreptitiously and deviously SPYING on an opponent, he would not have moved from the back row of the press box to the front row of the press box, seated directly in front of about a dozen Bengals employees, and taken wide shots of the Bengals’ sideline … from behind.

If one were to engage in an elaborate CHEATING enterprise, this would not be the way to do it. (Buying a ticket in the 300 level on the opposite sideline and busting out an iPhone in the stands would be much more effective.)

In a surprise of all surprises, against all conspiratorial odds, the Patriots’ story checked out. They broke a rule, and the matter of “Spygate 2.0” — which so many people wanted to be real — was nothing more than what was initially reported. Those who understand football on even the most basic level could easily understand that to be the reality.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell announced loudly and clearly on Wednesday that he is not one of those people.

In a question perfectly phrased by The Boston Globe’s Ben Volin, shouldn’t this be an open-and-shut case, one that does not require months upon months of “investigation,” whatever that may entail?

“Well,” Goodell immediately replied, “the answer to that question is no, it shouldn’t.”

Oh.

All right, then.

As a reminder: When the initial Spygate took place back in 2007, it involved Eric Mangini and the Jets kicking a Patriots camera crew off the sideline in the Meadowlands on Sunday, Sept. 9, 2007. Goodell gathered information on the matter and decided on the team’s punishment four days later. It was Thursday, Sept. 13, when Goodell announced that the Patriots would be feeling the pain of his jurisdictional hammer: A first-round pick in 2008, a massive $500,000 fine to Bill Belichick, and a $250,000 fine to the Patriots organization.

Despite the continued narrative that the Patriots “got off light” with Spygate, this was the first ever instance of a team being stripped of a first-round pick for any violation. This was a massive punishment, and it took Goodell all of three days to determine it.

Now a dozen years later, with an infraction much more minor, Goodell’s NFL investigation is entering its third month.

Given the unbelievably shoddy and slanted investigative methods put forth by the NFL during the yearslong saga known affably as DeflateGate, this lengthy review process likely does not have many folks in Foxboro feeling too comfortable. Those feelings of unease had to have been amplified when Goodell dropped a borderline gibberish line like this:

“We have responsibility … [to] make sure that something that we don’t know happened, didn’t happen.”

While it was a statement that was surely difficult to decipher, it was an announcement from Goodell that the NFL is effectively trying its damnedest to find a more severe violation by the Patriots, even if there’s no evidence or inkling of any further violation having been committed.

Goodell also uttered a statement that became almost rote for him whenever talking about DeflateGate from 2015-17.

“Our responsibility is to make sure we are being extremely thorough. We have the responsibility to 31 other clubs, we have responsibility to partners,” Goodell stated, just before his jabberwocky line about things they didn’t know happened … not happening. “So, from our standpoint, we want to make sure that we are being thorough. Our team has been on it. We have been focused on this. I think it has not been that lengthy a period of time.”

Of course, here in New England, we’ve been in tune with how quickly such matters tend to be dealt with when other teams are involved. Through DeflateGate, we learned of numerous comparable violations — use of Stickum, warming footballs with a heater on the sideline, etc. — that resulted only in warnings sent by the league. After DeflateGate, the Giants accused the Steelers of using underinflated footballs and even sent evidence to the league office. The NFL promptly and immediately stifled the story, saying the accusations were untrue. There was no investigation, there was no multi-million dollar investment from the league, and there was no drawn-out legal battle tying up courts at multiple levels. It was over before it even could get a cute nickname. (The same happened when a potential DeflateGate THREE-POINT-OH cropped up in the 2018 preseason!)

Bring the story to the present day, a photo went viral this past December showing a Ravens employee wearing a Bluetooth earpiece on the sideline, standing directly behind Baltimore head coach John Harbaugh during a game.

Torey@TorenLux

 

 

@AdamSchefter @RapSheet illegal Bluetooth device by assistant coach in Ravens / Browns game. Confirmed with NFL source, this is cheating

 

91

1:28 PM - Dec 22, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

 

69 people are talking about this

 

 

 

 

Such communication devices are strictly forbidden on team’s sidelines, for obvious reasons. The Ravens admitted to the violation (because, well, it aired on television), calling it “a mistake.” A Ravens spokesperson even said, “The Bluetooth was removed as soon as he noticed he was wearing it.”

Comparably, when the Bengals caught the videographer working for the Patriots, that videographer offered to delete the footage, which was clearly intended to serve as B-roll in the feature being produced on the Patriots’ scout. This offering was somehow interpreted as an admission of deeper guilt, which does not appear to have been applied to the Ravens’ situation.

Now, it would be disingenuous to treat all matters as apples-to-apples, so the fact that the Patriots — under the same head coach and with the same owner — got into trouble with cameras and tapes in the past should play a role in weighing any potential future offenses more heavily. Understood.

However …. this particular violation in Baltimore made the Ravens repeat offenders, after the team was fined $200,000 for violating the coach-to-player communication rules in 2018. So, one might reasonably assume that the NFL would feel a responsibility to the other 31 club and to league partners to be thorough about this egregious example of cheating during an NFL game. Instead, the story faded away as soon as it arrived, like a comet in the NFL’s cheating skies.

Meanwhile, the Patriots have to be anxiously awaiting their fate for a case that, despite Goodell’s insistence, is as open-and-shut as possible.

In an even more contemporary case, consider this reporting from The Athletic’s David Kaplan, regarding the accusations that the Saints somehow were involved with helping to manage the PR crisis of the local Catholic church’s sexual abuse crisis:

The NFL is not investigating the New Orleans Saints over advising the local Catholic church’s messaging in response to a lawsuit accusing the archdiocese of covering up allegations of sexual abuse, a league source said. Nor does the league plan to do so in the future unless Saints emails show troublesome actions.

That is a case of the NFL not really having an interest in making sure that something that they don’t know happened didn’t happen, does it? The Patriots are clearly getting a slightly different treatment.

This commentary from Goodell on a matter that really should have been resolved within days does lend credence to this report by Mike Florio just before Christmas:

“There’s a sense that investigators want to make that connection, and a perception that they are showing frustration when unable to tie the video crew to the football employees.”

Now take that report, and reconsider Wednesday’s commentary from Goodell:

“We have a responsibility … to understand all of what happened and make sure that something that we don’t know happened didn’t happen.”

Goodell and the NFL clearly are still out for blood. Considering we learned in 2015 that the league can find whatever it wants to find, that doesn’t bode particularly well for the Patriots at this moment in time.

[82nd Airborne]

5 minutes ago, JiF said:

Smart of the MLB.  It's the miracle plant.

Speaking of suspensions and fines and punishment, I guess the NFL is literally not even going to remotely address the fact the Patriots got caught cheating again?  That whole thing has just disappeared. 

 

 

They are trying to keep Brady at New England by all means. 

[ljr]

13 minutes ago, JiF said:

Smart of the MLB.  It's the miracle plant.

Speaking of suspensions and fines and punishment, I guess the NFL is literally not even going to remotely address the fact the Patriots got caught cheating again?  That whole thing has just disappeared. 

 

 

it's F*cking pathetic

If Goodell wasn't in Kraft's backpocket he should take-away their trophies too ... instead he'll get on his knees and buff them to a fine shimmy

[JohnnyLV]

Absolutely amazing to me that the exact same infraction done in the exact same way is just being completely dismissed. The NFL is petrified of actually doing what is needed.

[Maxman]

8 hours ago, JiF said:

Smart of the MLB.  It's the miracle plant.

Speaking of suspensions and fines and punishment, I guess the NFL is literally not even going to remotely address the fact the Patriots got caught cheating again?  That whole thing has just disappeared. 

 

 

Having read your posts I'm not sure miracle is the word that comes to mind.

[pdxgreen]

Yeah.  Learn from Rob Manfred?  !#!@ that guy!

[jgb]

14 hours ago, ljr said:

it's F*cking pathetic

If Goodell wasn't in Kraft's backpocket he should take-away their trophies too ... instead he'll get on his knees and buff them to a fine shimmy

The Pats are the biggest cheaters in the NFL. They are also the most penalized. The deflategate penalty was too harsh for the "crime." I think what the League was doing (and rightly so) was penalizing it as part of a pattern of broader conduct. I just don't see how Goodell is in Kraft's pocket--he's muffs basically every case involving sanctions.

[ljr]

10 hours ago, jgb said:

The Pats are the biggest cheaters in the NFL. They are also the most penalized. The deflategate penalty was too harsh for the "crime." I think what the League was doing (and rightly so) was penalizing it as part of a pattern of broader conduct. I just don't see how Goodell is in Kraft's pocket--he's muffs basically every case involving sanctions.

don't have the time to go back & pull up all of the times they've been caught & punished, all of the times they've been caught and not punished, all of the times they've done something wrong and gotten away with it, as well as all of the times they been suspected of doing something wrong. 

I agree on deflate-gate though ... it wasn't as big of a deal as many of the other ways they've cheated.  It was an attempted make up for spy-gate.  Since that bull$h*t attempt (whatever the next to nothing punishment it wound up being ... a 1st & taking away the money for one of Krafty's BJ's i think ... nothing compared to having cheated to win their 1st trophy) to keep Belichick in line.

Then the POS Goodell "BURNS THE EVIDENCE" of their cheating  ... let me say that again just in case the magnitude of that statement didn't come through he "BURNED THE EVIDENCE" !!!!!!!!!

Instead of punishing the heinous act, Good*$$hole condoned and rewarded cheating in his league.

That POS does whatever Krafty, Jerry Jones, and the rest of the Elite owner secret handshake circle-j*rk club tell him to do.

I can't believe that this sentence is true, with all of the steroid bull$h*t that's gone on, but MLB > NFL

they are doing something now to at least make an attempt ... Goodell is still wearing kneepads in front of Krafty's middle pocket with the zipper, and he's still a POS

[jgb]

1 hour ago, ljr said:

don't have the time to go back & pull up all of the times they've been caught & punished, all of the times they've been caught and not punished, all of the times they've done something wrong and gotten away with it, as well as all of the times they been suspected of doing something wrong. 

I agree on deflate-gate though ... it wasn't as big of a deal as many of the other ways they've cheated.  It was an attempted make up for spy-gate.  Since that bull$h*t attempt (whatever the next to nothing punishment it wound up being ... a 1st & taking away the money for one of Krafty's BJ's i think ... nothing compared to having cheated to win their 1st trophy) to keep Belichick in line.

Then the POS Goodell "BURNS THE EVIDENCE" of their cheating  ... let me say that again just in case the magnitude of that statement didn't come through he "BURNED THE EVIDENCE" !!!!!!!!!

Instead of punishing the heinous act, Good*$$hole condoned and rewarded cheating in his league.

That POS does whatever Krafty, Jerry Jones, and the rest of the Elite owner secret handshake circle-j*rk club tell him to do.

I can't believe that this sentence is true, with all of the steroid bull$h*t that's gone on, but MLB > NFL

they are doing something now to at least make an attempt ... Goodell is still wearing kneepads in front of Krafty's middle pocket with the zipper, and he's still a POS

That I agree with. Goodell serves at the pleasure of the most influential owners, of which Kraft is one. So I think it’s less about affinity for Kraft/Pats and more about Goodell knowing which side his bread is buttered on. Unfortunately every club needs a donkey and in the billionaire NFL owners club, that’s Woody. Obviously I’d still switch lives with him lol