NEW YORK — NFL and NFL Players Association officials met for just over two hours at league headquarters Monday concerning player punishment in the New Orleans Saints “bounty” case, finishing up at 6:45 p.m. ET.
The union’s contingent, a group of lawyers led by NFLPA general counsel Richard Berthelsen, came seeking for a lot more specifics on the scope of evidence that players helped run the incentive system. The NFL group comprised of senior vice president for law and labor policy Adolpho Birch, head of security Jeff Miller and director of investigations Joe Hummel. NFL general counsel Jeff Pash also was there for portion of the meeting.
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Hummel and Miller ran the investigation for the league more than the last three years.
Neither NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell nor NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith was in attendance.
NFLPA spokesman George Atallah told NFL.com’s Steve Wyche on Monday that the union hoped to learn a lot more about the evidence that the league gathered in its investigation of the “bounty” system that the Saints ran from 2009 to 2011.
Goodell had said he would wait for suggestions from the NFLPA ahead of announcing disciplinary measures for the 22 to 27 players involved in the scandal. Nonetheless, the union might not offer such recommendations.
“Our duty is to view and comprehend the evidence and to guarantee it is substantiated and concrete,” Smith stated in a statement released Monday, before the meeting. “We also have an obligation to make certain that our players have fair due approach. It is not our duty to give recommendations for discipline in a vacuum with no data or without having consultation with our players. It seems as if this entire matter has played out mostly in public, with regard for the fairness of the procedure an afterthought.”
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(About:) This article was distributed by Syndicated Sports news wire and aggregation service, For much more NFL news see: NFL-NFLPA meeting on Saints ‘bounties’ goes two-plus hours.
