Blahblahblah… you’re white-knighting Gordon because he’s a Brown. There, I summed up your whole argument. My argument: if you can’t follow the rules you agreed to you should be punished. That includes Bell and Blount.
I now anxiously await the wall of text that will soon follow reiterating the same stupid arguments you’ve been making the whole thread. Just cut and paste your last post and we can call it a day.
Speaking as a non Browns fan, I agree with everything senor beef said. If your only response is “lol fanboy” you not only lost the argument, but outed yourself as the worst kind of NFL fan.
Yes and no. I wouldn’t care very much if he was on another team, but if for whatever reason I was very interested in the matter, I would use the same arguments. It’s the arguments that matter, not the motivations. And you don’t seem particularly interested in addressing them.
I’ve made the arguments already, and I’m not alone in making them. The NFL has decided in a way that takes the best player off of his team, and he’s upset about it. We all know that. Rehashing the argument, as if we hadn’t already understood it completely, is pointless.
Asserting that “his career is threatened because of a negotiating tactic” is absurd. Josh Gordon’s career is threatened because he can’t stay away from dope or dope users and/or alcohol while under the microscope of an organization that, for better or worse, nails people to the wall for those things.
So, in the end, it comes down to “lol fanboy”.
It’s funny that you accuse me of not having arguments because obviously I have a stake in this, but your multitude of posts in this thread are simply repeating “rules are rules” and “lol fanboy” whereas I’ve explicitly made a case for the flaws in the NFL’s position. What if it were someone else making my arguments in my position, someone who wasn’t a Browns fan? Would the same words somehow have more credibility? If so, you are incapable of evaluating arguments.
The NFL has a shipload of stupid rules and interpretations of those rules. But that doesn’t negate a player’s responsibility for their own actions.
It is entirely possible to think that the rule that got Gordon suspended is stupid AND that Gordon is a knucklehead who can’t stop being a fuckup. They aren’t mutually exclusive positions. You vehemently argue one position, Airman argues the other, and you’re both right . But Josh Gordon simply isn’t going to get much sympathy because he’s made his own bed.
In a vacuum, the NFL probably doesn’t want to suspend Gordon. All of this bad pulicity it has stirred up for them - I’ve heard “you can beat a woman but god forbid you smoke a joint” a thousand times in the last month. They also probably want to capitalize on Manziel mania and not take away one of their young star players who may be crucial to his development.
The NFL also controlled the arbitration process. The arbitrator was not independent - he was a direct subordinate to Roger Goodell. And the appeals process ended up taking an absurdly long time, delaying their announcement of the verdict. And apparently, while this is ongoing, the NFL is negotiating with the NFLPA to exchange looser recreational drug standards in exchange for HGH testing.
It’s entirely plausible that they were drawing out the whole process in order to use Gordon’s case as a bargaining chip to get concessions for the NFLPA. The NFLPA didn’t bite, and that’s why the appeals processed dragged out as long as it could, to hold that chip as long as they could while the negotiations were ongoing.
Apparently the NFLPA wouldn’t bite, so they couldn’t just let Gordon off the hook now, not after using the “rules are rules” punishment as a threat.
If they do come to an agreement anyway, they may retroactively excuse Gordon, which wouldn’t make sense if “rules are rules” because the punishment was in effect when he was suspended. If they do end up using the completed negotiation to lower Gordon’s suspension, it’ll be pretty clear that the NFL was strictly adhering to their (obviously) idiotic policies rather than doing what’s best for the player, team, NFL, or fans as a negotiating tactic.
And as far as accusing me of white knighting, one of the very first things I said in this thread is that Gordon is a dumbass that needs to get his life in order. He’s surrounded by the wrong people. His brother’s twitter handle is RastaGordon. He gets caught with people who have weed on them. Dumb, dumb, dumb. But “he’s a dumbass” does not make him exceptional amongst his peers, nor does it justify draconian punishment under illogical policies, except if your main goal is to adhere to rules rather than to justice or positive outcomes.
Backing up a bit, there’s a tendency among certain people that I’ve never fully understood. An awful lot of people seem to completely shut down at even the faintest hint of a suggestion that a bad actor is not solely responsible for his behavior (e.g., that other people may also be guilty for making his behavior more likely, or that despite being in the wrong the person was nonetheless failed by whatever rules or systems are meant to support him, or that the behavior exists in a broader context that underscores whatever, etc.). In my head I’ve dismissively termed this tendency a “responsibility fetish,” though that’s not entirely fair. They just seem viscerally offended, in a way that I am not, that a person who did something wrong or foolish might escape in some measure his just censure.
(1) Josh Gordon is an idiot; when he reflects on this whole affair, the first thing that should go through his head is, “Man, I fucked up” … AND (2) the NFL’s testing & enforcement procedures are inconsistent and counter-productive, and the punishment meted out in this instance was draconian given what we can deduce the likely behavior to have been. I don’t get the folks who absolutely do not want to hear a (2) argument given the presence of a (1).
A rule can be in place and agreed-upon in advance while also being too-strict. A person can screw himself over with his stupid behavior while also being treated unjustly.
It’s because when I’ve fucked up in a manner similar to Josh Gordon it’s cost me dearly, with only the bare minimum of leniency given. I had to accept the consequences of my actions. So should he.
This isn’t unjust.
That may well be the source of the impulse I’m talking about, but surely you can see that that’s not even close to being a rational basis for judging others’ behavior or supporting a given course of action – it’s just an emotional reflex.
Why not? Because marijuana use ought rightly to be punished severely? Or because he stupidly broke the rule and *stupidity *ought rightly to be punished?
Latest rumors - everyone who’s suspended under the current drug policy from a violation in 2014 would be unsuspended if they wouldn’t have failed the new policy they’re currently hammering out.
Which means Wes Welker will probably be on the field very soon. Gordon too, you ask? Oh, maybe not. Gordon’s failed test came at the very end of 2013, and even though his suspension was handed down in 2014, apparently FOR NO FUCKING REASON WHATSOEVER they’re considering not letting him slide.
It’s just a rumor at this point, but this would be an absurd “fuck you” to Gordon and the Browns. Unjustifiable.
If they change their whole policy to free Wes Welker and still screw Gordon, it’s much more comparable and much more blatantly a capricious screwjob than the Gordon/Rice dichotomy that people have latched onto.
Edit: And I thought he failed his test in February, which confuses me about this rumor. Maybe some cog in the rumor mill got it mixed up at some point.
This might be a good time for the NFLPA to pick a fight. As long as it doesn’t make a strategic error in its approach to players and domestic violence, it has a good chance of pounding a suddenly reeling league staff on the drug issues.
I like when the NFLPA picks fights with the league anyway.
But lets not pretend the NFLPA is any less complicit in these things as the NFL. The NFLPA was willing to accept the current drug testing regime in order to cut down on practice time and padded practices. The NFLPA didn’t push for a stronger domestic violence plan. The NFLPA didn’t investigate or give two shits about Ray Rice’s partner. And the NFLPA has been fighting HGH testing for years, even rejecting a higher marijuana test that may have saved Josh Gordon, because they didn’t want HGH testing.
Maybe it was unjust when it happened to you.
Adam Schefter tweeted:
What the fuck is that? How is there a middle ground here? Either you’re saying “we’re raising the testing limits to 50ng because we’re concerned that the lower limit gave false positives, and everyone who is currently suspended who would not have qualified as a positive under the new policy is hereby unsuspended” or simply “we’re not taking back suspensions that were handed out under the old rules”
But there is no reason at all to reduce by half.
Goodell is truly a modern day Solomon.
Bolding mine.
Would it be correct to interpret that since he was suspended after March 11, even if his positive test was before then, then he’d be included in the retroactive forgiveness?
Or perhaps that refers to some sort of discipline that occurred for reasons other than a failed test.
I should probably just let this shit happen rather than obsess over it.
Obsess away. Gordon would probably be needed to allow Cleveland to make the playoffs.
Yeah, like your opinion is blissfly unaffected by your rooting interests. :rolleyes:
Gordon is an idiot, and the rule is stupid and unfair.
It isn’t.
He is, and it isn’t.
If Maximum Roger came down on the Doobie Brothers I’d be fine with that, too. It’s really simp… you know what, you know how simple it is, we’ve gone over it time and again in this thread and I’m tried of reading a bunch of white knighting. So I’m out.