Good One, Goodell

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell suspended Adam "Pac-Man" Jones for one year...to the sound of secret applause from owners, coaches, and, somewhat not surprisingly, the players themselves.

No one is being quoted directly, mind you, but no one has to be: this situation practically adjudicated itself.

For anyone who might be worried about whether or not this is fair to Pac-Man, as certain of his hangers-on, er, relatives are, I have but two, no, four words: shut the hell up.

As anyone with a prefrontal lobe can tell you, playing in the NFL is not anyone's God-given right, but rather a special privilege that carries its own unique rewards, not the least of which is the adulation of children. More than that, this is a multi-billion dollar enterprise, an empire on which the sun never sets, a very public venture that depends upon the goodwill of its fans for its lifeblood, so maintaining the correct image is very important.

Thus, it is nigh unto impossible for the commissioner to do anything less than he did, because Pac-Man's actions are only the tip of the iceberg. The Chicago Bears, recently of the Super Bowl, have seen one of their defensive lineman (the lamentable Tank Johnson) go to prison for four months, probably because his being so grossly stupid isn't penalized worse in Illinois. The Cincinnati Jailbirds, er, Bengals, had a conga line of players going into and out of the lockup for the last 18 months, with bandleader Chris Henry leading the way; Henry, to his credit, has more arrests and violations than touchdowns.

And then there's Pac-Man. The NBA All-Star Weekend was held in Las Vegas (!!) for the first time ever, as made for TV as any sporting event possibly could be, only to get upstaged by an NFL player's antics during what was his offseason. But then again, when an NFL player is involved in a shootout in a strip club that involved garbage bags full of money that he never intended to give away, and when a man is left paralyzed as a result of that shootout, and when women were beaten as a result of that shootout, and when the LVPD have Gil Grissom and the CSI gang pursuing felony charges against him, well, it's tough to care about the Slam Dunk Championship.

No league wants that kind of publicity.

Now, keep in mind, nothing has been decided in Vegas just yet. There are still legal hoops to jump through, and it may turn out that Pac-Man won't be charged with anything at all...or, it may be that he will be charged with a felony.

Still, this is about image. The league can't have its star players in this kind of trouble because there is no such thing as a cooperative press anymore. Back in the old days, writers knew about the sins of greats like Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle, and they chose not to write about them for reasons personal as well as social. But now, we live in the age of Woodward and Bernstein, and Bouton's "Ball Four." Nothing is sacred anymore. News outlets race to report the latest transgressions, lest they appear to be pandering to the players. Consider the old Oakland Raiders of John Matuzak and Otis Sistrunk and Kenny Stabler. Goodell might have had to suspend the lot of them had the press operated in 1974 the way it does now.

That's the thing that Pac-Man just doesn't get. His on-field production was nothing less than stellar. But even in a "just win" league, his off-field issues are blacking the eyes of more than just himself and his team, but the whole league.

And here's one more thing for him to think about: if he tries suing the NFL, well, his pockets had better be deeper than the garbage bags of cash he took into that Vegas strip club, because the NFL is lawyered up from here to Kingdom Come.

It sez so right here that those very lawyers were consulted before the commish made the only common sense move that he could make. That, in itself, should give him pause.

Good move, Mr. Goodell.

Should He Stay Or Should He Go?

For a guy who just won his second consecutive NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, Billy Donovan can't win.

How can he stay at a football school when genuine basketball royalty beckons?

How can he leave the program that he built from the ground up for the unreasonable expectations and white-hot glare of a historic powerhouse?

And, adding to that, there's the further issue of the loyalty that his players have already shown him, foregoing millions of guaranteed NBA dollars and risking career-threatening injury to get that second title. What message do his actions send now? If he stays, he's saying that loyalty means more than money. If he goes, he's saying that money means more than loyalty.

And we are talking about a LOT of money here. Either way, he figures to get paid outrageously, because Florida has the means to match whatever Kentucky offers...which brings us right back to square 1: stay in the home you built with these two hands, or move into the mansion down the road?

I believe that he should stay at Florida. I will not hear any more about basketball being second fiddle at a football school. Yes, Urban Meyer is there and yes, Meyer did bring a second championship to the rabid fans at The Swamp. But Dononvan has perservered through all of that, through Steve Spurrier and Ron Zook and now Meyer, and, as a result, has built a program of such magnitude that NBA first rounders decided to stay rather than bolt. That's HUGE.

Florida is now in a position to recruit itself, much like Kentucky does, and perhaps even better. If Donovan stays, he has guaranteed himself a seat at the Blue Chip Banquet with North Carolina, Duke, UCLA, and Kentucky, because kids will see him and see stability. Donovan won't have to fight to get McDonald's All-Americans (kids that John Thompson once called "hamburger heroes") to come to Florida; they'll put his team on that short list of ideal programs like the ones already mentioned when they're asked about their college options.

But, more important, at Florida, he's the first and ONLY Billy Donovan. In Kentucky, he'd only be the latest in a string of championship coaches, and all of them still in the shadow of Adolph Rupp. Roy Williams may have finally won his national championship at North Carolina, but he did it playing in the Dean Smith Center. Ben Howland is the first UCLA coach to have real success after the legend that is John Wooden. Donovan could make NBA money at the program he built, with recruits coming to him, and compete for basketball titles in a football conference for the rest of his life.

I'm not saying that he wouldn't be challenged; of course he would. Anyone who works with 18-year-old men on a regular basis is challenged daily. And he would fight for the spotlight with the football program, which is not a bad thing. That kind of thing would keep him motivated to make his program the best, not that he needs any additional motivation beyond what already drives him.

All in all, given money, stature, and recruits, the Kentucky job might be a lateral move at best, and, considering that the pressure to win in Lexington will be a thousand times worse than it is in Gainesville, it might even be a step down.

Billy Donovan should stay at Florida.