Appeal Day

Adrian Peterson's appeal of his indefinite suspension will be heard today by Harold Henderson. Per the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, Commissioner Roger Goodell hears any appeals of disciplinary actions. Considering that Goodell is the one that dishes out the discipline, the NFLPA erred greatly when they agreed to having the commissioner hear the appeals of his own decisions. The NFLPA requested neutral arbitration for Peterson's appeal and the NFL put up Henderson. He's not very neutral. Henderson is the NFL's former executive vice president of labor relations. He's often tapped by Goodell as he's heard 87 appeals since 2008 involving personal conduct and drug issues. The guess here is that the majority of Henderson's appeals hearings were prior to the 2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement. He did hear Josh Gordon's appeal this past summer.

Peterson will come to the hearing armed with recorded conversations between himself and NFL executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent. Peterson recorded the conversations because he became suspicious of Vincent's motives for pushing Peterson to attend a November 14 hearing involving outside experts. A hearing that was well outside the procedures dictated by the CBA. That CBA sure looks more and more useless at every turn. Vincent mentioned that Peterson could receive credit for the nine games, now 11, served while on the exempt list. Something that Goodell said wasn't the case in his suspension of Peterson on November 18. Vincent also told Peterson that he would not be subject to the enhanced version of the personal conduct policy that Goodell unilaterally decreed in August. The punishment handed to Peterson went beyond that dictated by Goodell's "pet policy." And, there is the problem with all of this. Pretty much every disciplinary action taken by Goodell since the summer has been arbitrary and inconsistent. He completely hacked up everything in the Ray Rice case. He promised to do the right thing moving forward but continued to do everything wrong. That was made even quite evident when a neutral arbitrator (a real neutral arbitrator-not Henderson) overturned Goodell's suspension of Rice last week.

Common sense would put Adrian Peterson back on a football field as early as this Sunday. The unfortunate thing is that Goodell and the NFL have rarely approached common sense in anything that they do.