Saints players win appeal versus NFL on bounty suspensions

[Haloti92]

I didn't see that in the article. Did you see it elsewhere, or do you have the full ruling?

CBSSports has amended the article (I think a few times) since I linked it. Sounds like no one knows exactly what the heck is going on.

Despite the confusing stories (ESPN, CBS, NBC), I think the gist of it is that the panel has rejected Goodell's authority (based on CBA? or lack of evidence?) to penalize the players for "paying to injure," but it seems to say that Goodell has the authority to penalize players for "agreeing to injure." This is different from what the CBSSports article originally said, as it did not clearly include the second category.

"Paying for performance" is a way less serious infraction. But "agreeing to injure" seems to me to be pretty serious, so maybe Goodell will, in fact, keep the punishments the same.

This may be an inane matter of semantics, whereby the panel thought there was insufficient proof that players were ever given cash to injure someone, but there was sufficient proof that money was exchanged for something (illegal but minor), and there was proof that players talked about (agreed to) trying to injure specific players (like a moneyless bounty system, which is also against the rules).

I have no idea, and I am not sure any of these media sites know either.