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Williams elevates nastiness

Williams elevates nastiness

There was nothing exactly unforgettable about the weeklong run-up to Super Bowl XLIV, unless it was that Miami was cooler and windier than some might have liked, or that at least no one was trying to burn it to the ground. (See Liberty City, Overton, Super Bowl XXIII.)

The New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts were mumbling through a coarse load of media responsibilities without saying anything inflammatory or even a little bit stupid.

But not all of the coaches were that lucky. In fact, one thing I hadn't forgotten from the week prior to the Saints confounding Peyton Manning is that New Orleans defensive coordinator Gregg Williams did say something unbelievably stupid, something so perfectly juvenile I remember it stopped me cold as I was passing the podium from which he delivered it.

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When the NFL fingered Williams last week for running a system of bonus payments for Saints defenders who injured opposing players, I wished I'd written down what he said that day in February 2010. Wished I'd kept the quote sheet the NFL produces for every formal Super Bowl week interview.

Fortunately, a few people did, and this week it resurfaced in Greg Easterbook's column on ESPN.com. The context was Williams talking about his own intensely aggressive approach to life in general, to football in particular, and to how that attitude informs everything he does right down to how he motivated his sons for youth football:

"I told their little league coaches, 'My kids will play fast; they're going to play nasty; they're going to play tough. Tell the rest of the babies around them to speed up.' "

So I've had Gregg Williams filed under "Lunatics" for a good two years. The NFL believes his loot-for-ligaments and cash-for-concussive-crash incentives have been thriving for at least three. But Williams also said, after that Saints' Super Bowl victory, in some audio unearthed by NPR:

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"My whole life, I've been trying to get people to play nastier."

That means his life as an assistant with the Tennessee Titans, with the Washington Redskins, with the Jacksonville Jaguars and with the Buffalo Bills. That covers 15 years, all with organizations, mind you, that even though they were in the business of overt organized mayhem known as professional football, were simply not playing nasty enough for one Gregg Williams.

Observers league-wide are convinced the punishment coming to Williams will eclipse Roger Goodell's punishment for 2007's Spygate scandal involving the New England Patriots' taping of the New York Jets defensive signals, a sentence that included $750,000 in fines and the forfeiture of draft choices.

That was an ethical failure that threw the dim light of suspicion on the NFL. What Williams did, with the tacit approval of his Big Sleazy bosses, would have been common criminality in any broader societal context. Williams, described as "contrite" during the investigation, admitted to the payments and admitted that the Saints knew it was wrong while they were attempting to maim people for pocket money. But I guess if generating destructive nastiness is wrong, Williams didn't want to be right.

In the near term, the Bonusgate scandal scrapes another coat of high gloss off the league's image, which is unfortunate for the majority of teams and players who play the game honorably.

"I just can't sit there and be silent," an agitated Brady Poppinga told Foxsports.com this past sweek. "I look at this as an opportunity to share with the public that we, as football players, are not barbaric and out to try and destroy everything in our path. Football is my profession and I take it seriously. It's an art form. It's technical, strategic and takes a lot of intelligence to play.

"When this came out, it started to confirm the idea that football guys are idiots. That's not who we are. Ninety-five percent of the guys are very intelligent. It's just guys who love to go out and play a physical game."

Poppinga, a linebacker with Williams' new team, the St. Louis Rams, temporarily, emphasized that Williams' tactics of encouraging hits that knock players out of the games were over the line. He called the system "animalistic, repulsive, degrading."

Which is why they're going to love it so much at the home office, where the line of brain damage and potential brain damage litigants already stretches down Park Avenue farther than the NFL legal department can see. The league might have thought it could find a good faith pathway out of the concussion epidemic, but when players start suing for workplace compensation resulting from rogue coaches and franchises bent on personal destruction and cruelty, the place where the NFL could slip into a storm sewer of litigation is but a few missteps away.

The commissioner cannot equivocate on this. An NFL with any place for a Gregg Williams might not be able to sustain itself.

A lifetime ban for the Saints' main sinner doesn't seem too nasty.

First Published: March 11, 2012, 5:00 a.m.

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