A Fine Mess

A Fine Mess

It appears that after close to a month, the Bears and their first-round draft pick, linebacker Roquan Smith, have come to an agreement on his contract.  The standoff was a matter of principle on both sides, I’m sure.

Smith is a hard-hitting—dare I say “headhunting”?—player who feared that the Bears would dock him his guaranteed money if he ran afoul of the NFL’s new helmet-contact rules; he also didn’t want to lose money if he were fined for other on-the-field offenses.  The Bears, of course, were looking for ways to send Smith in a time machine back to the days they could sign a player for a fraction of his worth.  For me, this is a tough fight to pick sides.

It’s funny, though, how professional sports are moving in a direction the justice system is extremely slow to go.  Teams and leagues will penalize players for off-the-field conduct that would be criminal if only a judge and/or jury ruled it as such.  Ah, but work behavior, that’s where it gets murky.  Who’s going to pay that fine for head butting?  Or for taking out a player driving to the basket?  Or for intentionally throwing at a batter?

Here’s an idea—why not fine both the team and the player for bad behavior during the course of a game?  The player is an employee for the team and acting as a representative of said business.  If he’s going to do something that combines dangerous, hurtful and dumb, then his employer should share in the liability for allowing a particular incident to occur.  This happens all the time in the real world.

If any Bear—or Bull or Blackhawk or Cub or White Sox—is fined during the course of the season, determine the fine as a percentage of the player’s salary and level a similar penalty against the team’s gross earnings.  That would either improve player conduct or unite players and management against commissioners in a way never before seen.