NFL Suspension Rules: The Michael Vick Scandal

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The National Football League is the biggest sports league in the world, bringing in a whopping 13 billion dollars in revenue last season. Millions of Americans tune in every week to follow their favorite teams hoping for that precious Lombardi Trophy in February. The NFL has a suspension rule where if a player does something against their code of conduct, they can be suspended for as long as the NFL sees fit. Often this rule is used unjustly against players just so the NFL can run away from controversy; this ends up hurting the players and teams in the NFL and ruins the integrity of the game. The NFL has had times where their suspension was justly used. One example of this is the Michael Vick scandal. While Vick was playing for the Atlanta Falcons in 2007, he pled guilty to being involved in a dog fighting ring. He did so after a report done by the U.S. Department of Agriculture had several witness accounts and very dark stories of the crimes he committed. He trained pitbulls to fight each other. He described the dog fighting time as “rolling season” (USDA) and found it funny when he would see the dogs fighting. The report also describes how he killed dogs who wouldn’t perform well. In …show more content…

The Patriots back in 2015 won the AFC championship game 45-7 against the Colts. There were some accusations going around that the Patriots deflated the balls a little bit, which gave an advantage to them. The NFL put the Patriots under investigation for this once the Super Bowl was over. This put a lot of suspicions on the Patriots by the public. During the investigation, the NFL found no evidence of such actions by the Patriots whatsoever. But the NFL still decided to give Tom Brady a four game suspension for the next season. The NFL once again listened to the court of public opinion instead of using actual facts to make their decision of

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