Why do you care if player A paid taxed on money on the board?

Does Player A care if you paid taxes on your tips from working as a server?

WTF, I don't understand

When you run around and intentionally try to destroy someones ACL or break their legs, off the field, you would be put in prison, likely for years, not months. Now, I understand that on the field and off the field are not the same. You accept a huge amount of risk by voluntarily putting on a uniform and playing football. Injuries, even catastrophic ones, that happen during the course of the game are not subject to criminal prosecution, even if they are late hits, or dirty hits, or cheap shots, or anything like that.

But this is a little different, if only because you have documented intent to injure players entirely outside of the rules of the game. I doubt you would actually win, because it would be pretty difficult to prove any single instance was motivated by the prize pool, and not just a big hit. But I'm not so sure I'd say it doesnt "deserve" legal prosecution.

OK. I guess I did get levelled.

I doubt the league has the authority to fire team employees, but they certainly have the authority to issue multi-year suspensions or lifetime bans if they choose to do so. A difference that makes no difference is no difference.

The state and/or federal prosecutors would be the ones to decide whether it warrants legal prosecution, and I'd hope they'd read the 50,000+ pages of the NFL's report and conduct their own investigation rather than relying upon a press release before deciding whether to pursue that course. From the media reports, I think they'd be remiss in their duties if they did not at least consider the possibility.

Good point. Do we know if there are stats on late hit penalties by team? I'd be interested to see if the Saints had more than anyone else.

Also, to be nitpicky, it's hard to go out and destroy someone's ACL tbh. I'm sure you were just using that as an example, but I'm trying to put all of this into perspective. An ACL injury has specific mechanisms of injury, and I believe it would be quite difficult to go up to someone and just destroy their ACL. Breaking legs may be more feasible, but even that would be difficult to do without it seeming intentional.

Bill Romanowski came out years ago and talked about all of the dirty stuff that goes on at the bottom of piles. He even admitted to attempting to break fingers, hitting below the belt, etc., so I'm sure that sort of stuff goes on all the time and wouldn't be unique to having a bounty system in place.

My main point is that it's probably more difficult than you think to go out and end someone's season or career by hitting them. Yes, concussions are easier to give because of helmet-to-helmet impact. Yes, you can clothesline someone, like we saw in the Peyton Manning video, and hurt someone's neck. But overall, it's gonna be rare that someone's season or career is ended because of an impact injury, someone hitting them hard, squared up, etc., unless the victim of the hit just has a fragile body or something.

Edit: And by saying "you", I wasn't referring specifically to you, vhawk; I was referring to the audience of the thread.

Has there been anything said about how much was actually paid out?

There is something called the "unhappy triad" which is commonly associated with lateral force injuries to the knee, and quite reasonably, is most common in football, or soccer, sports where a lateral impact is common, and includes injuring the ACL, MCL and medial meniscus. This doesnt really matter to the discussion, but hey, the more you know, lol.

Lol, yeah I know. I'm about to graduate in May with my BS in Athletic Training

I mean, it's definitely possible, but considering the speed of the game, just seems unlikely, IMHO.

are there rumors that there is video and audio evidence of vilma plunking down cash on a meeting table?

sources within the Saints organization.

is the source something ridiculous like "someone who is familiar with someone who knows Greg Williams," or is it legit and there are emails about Vilma?

diving at a knee is gonna drastically raise the likelihood of a knee injury.

Obviously. But this is how all DBs seem to tackle nowadays anyway. Nothing new. LBs aren't really diving at knees too often, and DLs have learned to stop because it'll get called now. The only reason it happens sometimes, imo, is because defenders are attempting to get lower than the ball carrier.

Also, I'd be willing to bet that there is a % out there that says there are more non-contact knee injuries than contact knee injuries in football. If I'm wrong, I'll eat my words

well, theres more ways to go after an acl than merely diving at the knee. rolling up on a dude or twisting him or leveraging a leg. i think most players usually avoid going for that and let up if the guy is already down. some dont.

also, just bc this bounty system was in place, doesnt mean all the dudes were trying to hurt players in any way possible.

no real way to measure this. id imagine you are wrong.

Especially since NFL fines are way, way more than what was apparently being offered.

Yeah hopefully the players who weren't actively trying to hurt other players for extra cash skate with the Shoeless Joe treatment.

lol

I wouldn't be totally shocked if some ambitious DA in a city in which the Saints played during the past three years doesn't consider bringing conspiracy charges. IANAL, but I believe the underlying crime does not need to be proven, but only the act of conspiring to commit the crime.

You mean Buck Weaver?

There are definitely ways to measure this. Many studies are done on ACL injuries. While the NFL may not keep stats related to the mechanism of injury (MOI) of ACL injuries, it's common knowledge among health care professionals specializing in sports injuries that non-contact ACL tears are highly common.

http://ukpmc.ac.uk/abstract/MED/1087...0HxUzatrWKNU.0
http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/42/6/394.full
While neither of these mention American football specifically, it does show that there are higher non-contact injuries of the ACL than non-contact.

http://jaaos.org/content/8/3/141.short
If your rebuttal was that the above articles only looked at lower contact sports than American football, this study goes over the fact that the highest incidence is in pivoting sports, which includes football, basketball, etc.

You can google ACL injury mechanism of injury in american football for further results. Also, here is the link to the scholarly articles:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?

http://ajs.sagepub.com/content/29/2/196.short

The last link is another study that looks at just non-contact ACL injury factors.

Here is a non-scholarly page with solid information:
http://aclstudygroup.com/ACLFinal/me..._of_injury.htm

And another:
http://ehealthmd.com/content/what-causes-acl-tear

Basically, for an ACL injury to occur via contact, there would have to be some serious translation of the femur moving backward or the tibia moving forward. This, of course, is quite possible and definitely does occur, but it's more likely to occur by someone planting or cutting than by getting hit in the knee.

Sidenote: Not trying to seem snobby or anything, just trying to educate Athletic injuries are part of my future career and something I've become passionate about.

Oh and.../derail

dude ofc non contact sports are gunna have higher incidence of non contact injuries.

Not sure if being leveled. Did you read my entire post? Do you know the mechanism of an ACL injury, or even the most common MOIs? I guess I should have started off with that. Sigh.

ya i know the mechanism of an acl injury. it when bad stuff happens to ur knee. its much easier for bad stuff to happen when big fast crazy mofos are smashing into you.

This is just ignorance. You obviously did not read into anything I posted in response to your post. Look up facts before trying to turn this into a debate, please.

It's a small issue relative to what else is going on here, but every taxpayer should care if other taxpayers are evading their taxes. Anything one person evades eventually needs to be made up by those who do not cheat on their taxes; underreporting of income is in effect theft from all law-abiding taxpayers.

From Peter King's MMQB:

I keep coming back, over and over, to something I first reported Friday evening, something I saw in a confidential four-page memo sent to the 32 teams (and obtained from one of those teams) late Friday, detailing the abuses.
"At times, players both pledged significant amounts and targeted particular players,'' the memo said. "For example, prior to a Saints playoff game in January 2010, defensive captain Jonathan Vilma offered $10,000 in cash to any player who knocked Favre out of the game.''