Professional football players in the National Football League have a union known as the NFLPA… the NFL Players Association. Most of the time the union stays in the background, however, recent negative developments in the NFL have caused the players union to step up and take action.
The NFLPA deals mainly with the NFL Commissioner’s office… which means Roger Goodell and Mr. Goodell has had extraordinary powers in dealing with player discipline. Exclusive extraordinary powers, way too much, say his critics.
While Goodell was handing down what most everyone considered reasonable sentences to offending players, no one said much of anything about it. Then came the Ray Rice two game suspension and the lid blew off. Thousands of words were written on the subject… and none were very flattering to the NFL Commissioner’s office.
Although toning down the leagues’ drug policy has been talked about for some time now, no affirmative action was ever taken until the NFLPA and the NFL got together… finally… and worked out a tentative compromise that both sides can live with.
When Goodell announced the Josh Gordon of the Cleveland Browns was to be suspended for the entire 2014 season, that was too much. Even taking history into consideration, losing a year away from your team has got to be a crippling blow to a professional football player.
Not only do they lose all that money, but the vast majority of these players have not missed any significant time off the football field since they were in junior high school. That’s got to be hell to go through… for smoking a joint. Overkill Mr. Goodell.
Greg Aiello of the commissioner’s office told reporters that there were still ‘significant obstacles’ to reaching a final agreement on revisions to the current drug program. One major move was the announcement that the league will begin testing for human growth hormone (HGH) beginning this season.
Important changes to the present NFL drug policy include raising the threshold for marijuana testing and changing how the league will treat offseason positive testing for amphetamines… from a performance enhancing drug to a simple drug abuse case. Under this ruling, Wes Welker of the Denver Broncos will be allowed back on the gridiron next week along with Orlando Scandrick of the Cowboys and Reshad Jones of the Dolphins.
Josh Gordon had his suspension cut from the entire season down to just 10 games… which is still most of the season… but better than nothing.
NFLPA President Eric Winston released a statement saying, “This is an historic moment for our players and our league.”
