A Fine NFL

My initial reaction to the news about the fines handed out for last Saturday's Stealers-Bengals game (sic) was that the fine, at least for Porter, is a tacit admission by the league that its refs screwed up by either not calling a penalty on Porter for being on the field at the time or for not providing an offsetting penalty for the flag they threw on Jones (that Porter instigated).

But now comes word that Pacman Jones is being fined $29,000 fine for unsportsmanlike conduct as a result of the contact he made with a ref. In that context, it's hard to see what the league's rationale was for such a heavy fine for Jones as compared to Porter, or that the Porter fine is nothing more than a slap on the wrist. To add insult to injury, Pacman's penalty was game-deciding call and Porter and the Steelers are happy to pay $10,000 for the privilege of advancing to the next playoff round.

Pacman's actions were adjudicated on the field and to the extent he made "contact" with a ref it was because Porter instigated it and for which he wasn't penalized at the time. But Porter's field presence only merits $10k and sideline hair pulling by a coach also only gets $10k. That to me is the egregious foul - the hair pulling - that should have been a lot more and certainly more relative to what Jones got hit for.

Just another reminder that the league office is more interested in protecting its officials than it is about its players.