By Mark Snyder, Detroit Free Press –
The NFL may be America’s most popular sport, but this off-season it was rocked by the New Orleans Saints’ bounty scandal, in which defensive players allegedly were paid — by their coaches and each other — for injury-inducing hits.
What shocked the sports world isn’t a new phenomenon in professional football, apparently.
“It wasn’t prevalent,” former Michigan center Steve Everitt, who played seven NFL seasons with the Cleveland Browns, Baltimore Ravens, Philadelphia Eagles and St. Louis Rams from 1993 to 2000, said on Friday’s WTKA-AM (1050) radiothon. “Without getting specific, there were definitely times you had a big game coming up and whether it was a big division rival, something where guys in the heat of a moment in a full team meeting or in individual position meetings, somebody would get fired up, get tired of watching somebody make plays from the last time you played a team and someone would jump up and be like, ‘if so-and-so doesn’t get any tackles, I’ve got however much money.’ It did happen, for sure.”
As a long retired player, Everitt has the freedom to speak honestly about his playing days and doesn’t implicate the modern game because he’s more than a decade removed.
Active Wolverines tread a bit more carefully but understood the massive punishments laid out by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, the most severe being a full season for linebacker Jonathan Vilma, a full year for Saints coach Sean Payton, indefinite suspension for former New Orleans defensive coordinator Gregg Williams. Other coaches, executives and players got shorter penalties.
“Depending on the level they were involved as players, I think you have to stomp out the fire before it gets too big,” said former U-M offensive guard Steve Hutchinson, now with the Tennessee Titans. “I’m sure Steve Everitt can tell you a lot more about bounties and things like that from the early 1990s because you know it went on. It’s just like the elusive UFO everybody keeps talking about. You never see one but you hear of it.
“Nowadays, maybe these players in this particular instance with the Saints, it was going on and they got popped. I don’t know if it will ever come up again. Or you’ll have to worry about it again. Maybe that was the point. Maybe Roger had to do what he had to do in this one instance to make the penalties so severe on the player and coaching staff so it never has to come up again. I don’t know if there’s any (other) way he could have done it.”
Green Bay Packers cornerback Charles Woodson, the 1997 Heisman Trophy winner, echoed Hutchinson’s comments, saying he understands Goodell’s intent.
“I can’t really speak to how prevalent it is because I’ve never been on a team where it was overly talked about where people were paid to try to hurt players,” Woodson said on the radiothon. “But as far as the bounty itself, I know the game is violent enough as it is without paying a guy to go out and hurt a guy. A guy’s going to get hurt in the game anyway. I understand the league perspective on it and what they’re trying to do.”
