“I think the NFL is ten years away from an implosion. I’m just telling you: pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. And they’re getting hoggy.” That’s what Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said in an interview from March 2014, commenting on the growing greed of the National Football League.
Now that the NFL is on the rocks again after Thursday’s overturning of Patriots quarterback Tom Brady’s suspension, a humiliating defeat for Commissioner Roger Goodell and the league, the outspoken Cuban is seizing another opportunity to take a thinly-veiled swipe at the NFL.
The Dallas-Morning News reprinted a memo sent by Cuban soon after word of Judge Berman’s ruling broke (but before the NFL declared its intent to appeal), in which he talked about the greater implications of the decision.
So Tom Brady’s suspension is overturned. No question the NFL is freaking out. Not because they care whether Brady plays or not.
Based on what the analysts are saying is the basis of the decision, the lack of transparency by the NFL was the reason the suspension was dismissed.
Brady didn’t have access to all the information the NFL had. So he couldn’t present a defense. So the game was rigged.
In a manner of speaking the courts “deflated” the NFLs ability to be judge and jury. There is no way the NFL or any league wants to have to share everything they know in a discipline situation. Particularly since everything leaks in this day and age
I can’t wait to hear what our lawyers at the NBA say about the decision.
It may be that all the big pro sports have an issue that we have to address together.
Or maybe this is a new precedent that creates a fairer system
Time will tell.
It’s obvious that Cuban believes the developments transcend the boundaries of the NFL and speak to a greater potential problem of transparency in all of professional sports.
In Cuban’s eyes, Goodell and Co. are a cautionary tale, a sort of worst-case scenario warning against what can happen when a league acts according to its own personal agenda or vendetta. And hopefully, we do get that fairer system to prevent any league from ever having to go through the total embarrassment that the NFL is undergoing right now.
Pigs get fat. Hogs get deflated.
