TEAM BOUNTY HUNTER FLAGGED

(CNN) -- New Orleans Saints Head Coach Sean Payton was suspended for the entire 2012 season and the team was fined $500,000 for operating a bounty program against opponents, under sweeping discipline announced by the NFL on Wednesday.

Under the program, the team paid bonuses for knocking opposing players out of a game.

Former Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, now with the St. Louis Rams, was suspended indefinitely from the NFL, effective immediately, the league said. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell will review Williams' status at the season and whether to reinstate him, the league said.

The team will also forfeit its second-round draft picks in 2012 and 2013.

Saints General Manager Mickey Loomis was suspended without pay for the first eight regular-season games of the 2012 season, the NFL said. Assistant Head Coach Joe Vitt was suspended without pay for the first six regular-season games, the league said.

One sports analyst, Jim Trotter of Sports Illustrated, said the discipline is "historic."
Brees: Bounty issue a 'black eye'

"One of the reasons they could be so strong against the Saints was that there was a paper trail," Trotter said, referring to e-mails.

"I don't think other teams would be dumb enough to put it in writing," Trotter said of the bounty system. "I definitely believe they are trying to make an example of them."

The NFL is facing class-action lawsuits from former players who claimed that their efforts led to concussions, head trauma and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a dementia-like brain disease.

"The league has to be concerned about lawsuits," Trotter said.

The NFL investigation found the Saints had an "active bounty program" during the 2009, 2010 and 2011 seasons in which "bounty" payments were paid for "knock-outs" and "cart-offs" -- plays in which an opposing player had to leave the game, the league said in a statement. The bounties even identified specific players as targets, the league said.

The investigation found that the Saints showed "a deliberate effort to conceal the program's existence from league investigators, and a clear determination to maintain the program despite express direction from Saints ownership that it stop as well as ongoing inquiries from the league office," the NFL said.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the "pay-for-performance" program "undermined the integrity of the game."

The league found that Payton failed to supervise players and coaches, didn't inquire into the facts of the bounty program though he was aware of the league's inquiries, and encouraged "the false denials by instructing assistants to 'make sure our ducks are in a row,' " the NFL statement said.

Goodell described the Saints' violations of league rules "particularly unusual and egregious."

"When there is targeting of players for injury and cash rewards over a three-year period, the involvement of the coaching staff, and three years of denials and willful disrespect of the rules, a strong and lasting message must be sent that such conduct is totally unacceptable and has no place in the game," Goodell said.

"Beyond the clear and continuing violations of league rules, and lying to investigators, the bounty program is squarely contrary to the league's most important initiatives -- enhancing player health and safety and protecting the integrity of the game," the commissioner continued.

"Let me be clear. There is no place in the NFL for deliberately seeking to injure another player, let alone offering a reward for doing so," Goodell said.

They're saying Jeremy Shockey was the whistleblower on this whole thing.

Wow.

http://deadspin.com/5895307/

THE ISLANDERS SHOULD BE SO LUCKY

GETTING RID OF THE COACH AND GM
AND HAVING THE NHL DO IT FOR US
A DREAM

BUT THE REALITY
HOW MANY OF THEM
WOULD UNDERSTAND THE BOUNTY CONCEPT
(BESIDES MARTIN)

Couldn't they step in because our owner is a wimp and has an anti-fight policy, and that goes against the ethics of the league.