The Bernstein Brief: Good Luck With This One, NFL
By Dan Bernstein--
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(CBS) It was enough for a sardonic, out-loud laugh amid the routine and usually soul-crushing inspection of the morning timeline.
NFL operations vice president Troy Vincent tweeted the possibility that the league is considering "immediate ejections or suspensions" for illegal hits during games, as if it's trying to achieve peak levels of confusion and inconsistency as quickly and explosively as can be.
It's bad enough that we don't know what a completed catch is or what constitutes holding, and that we default to assuming that any big play is somehow un-happening upon review. But now our weekly bewilderment would be certain to include players being kicked out of games for the same act another guy did on the next screen over with no ramifications beyond a slo-mo highlight replay into the commercial break.
This is almost guaranteed to be a complete mess, affecting teams' ability to compete by removing key players at critical times for arbitrary reasons. The league will send out educational videos of what hits can result in such discipline, and then multiple officials will be certain to get it wrong in the very first week of games.
It's the latest example of contradictory grandstanding by a sport increasingly dishonest about its essence, and managing that conflict in a way that threatens to further erode its product.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Bernstein and Goff Show" in afternoon drive. You can follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.