Fansided

Titans Kenny Britt Suspended One Game; NFL Hypocrisy Epitomized

By Josh Hill

Kenny Britt was suspended one game by the NFL, but that's not the story that should come out of this which is unfortunate for a lot of reasons. (Mandatory Credit: Jim Brown-US PRESSWIRE)
Kenny Britt was suspended one game by the NFL, but that's not the story that should come out of this which is unfortunate for a lot of reasons. (Mandatory Credit: Jim Brown-US PRESSWIRE) /
facebooktwitterreddit
Kenny Britt was suspended one game by the NFL, but that's not the story that should come out of this which is unfortunate for a lot of reasons. (Mandatory Credit: Jim Brown-US PRESSWIRE)
Kenny Britt was suspended one game by the NFL, but that's not the story that should come out of this which is unfortunate for a lot of reasons. (Mandatory Credit: Jim Brown-US PRESSWIRE) /

The Tennessee Titans were awaiting a decision on the status and availability of wide receiver Kenny Britt, and they finally have that answer. The NFL has suspend the troubled receiver one game after his eighth arrest this summer on three years.

Britt is expected to appeal the suspension which may take up to five days to either get overturned or reinforced.

“That’s just another bump in the road, another pothole in the road that we’ve got to go over and smoothing that out,” Britt said last week. “That’s something I’m not putting in my head right now, just hoping to recover from these knee injuries.”

This has been a decision long in the making but after his eighth arrest in three years, a one game suspension seems really anti-climactic. When an NFL player acts up in public, it’s huge news, but for a lot of people, it’s taken until Britt’s eighth arrest to realize he actually has that many. The laughable suspension from the league only reinforces this hypocritical attitude towards Britt.

Titans fans will stand by there man, despite the DUI charge and seven priors, but all eyes should be turned to the league and not Britt after this decision.

The NFL is not in a good place with the NFLPA. First the whole Bounty-gate scandal and Jonathan Vilma’s lawsuit against Roger Goodell. The whole reason Goodell came down on the Saints and Vilma was to protect the players — a crusade Goodell has been on since he took office. But the NFL followed up that valiant and controversial saga with fully backing inexperienced replacement refs.

Does anyone else find this mildly amusing?

To add to that, Goodell suspends a defensive back for making a legal, albeit ridiculously harsh, hit on a defender and fines him, but doesn’t blink at giving a repeat offender of the law a minimal one game suspension.

Goodell ruined Adam “Pacman” Jones for paralyzing a man, but suspended Aqib Talib one game for brutally beating a man half to death in Florida over a taxi cab fare.  I tend to side with Goodell when it comes to player safety, but the inconsistency is hard to defend and even harder to take seriously. To put Goodell’s suspensions in perspective , Donte Stallworth ran over a man and killed him when he was drunk — he got a one year suspension. Jonathan Vilma was the captain of a defense structured on a bounty system and he gets the same length of suspension that a man who killed someone got.

This isn’t excusing the blame that should rightfully be placed on Britt, but it seriously undermines a progressive attitude towards discipline that Goodell is trying to mark as his legacy.

As for Britt, his meager one game suspension isn’t carrying any weight of a message, but with the bi-polar way Goodell has been doling out bans, even if this had been a severe sentence, it’s highly unlikely anyone would have taken it seriously.