The NFL is Not Kidding Around When it Comes to Mask-Shaming Coaches. The Fines are Already Up to $1.7 Million
Fox Business - The NFL has fined five head coaches and teams this week, totaling more than $1.7 million in fines, after they violated the league’s guidance on wearing face coverings during games.
San Francisco 49ers’ Kyle Shanahan, Denver Broncos’ Vic Fangio, Seattle Seahawks' Pete Carroll, New Orleans Saints’ Sean Payton and Las Vegas Raiders’ Jon Gruden were all individually fined $100,000 for failing to wear masks during Week 2’s matchups, ESPN reported.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell told USA Today on Tuesday that the fines are “consistent with the message” the league established before the start of the season. ...
“I’m doing my best,” Gruden said after Monday night’s game. “I’ve had the virus. I’m doing my best. I’m very sensitive about it. I’m calling the plays. I apologize. If I get fined, I will have to pay the fine.”
Believe me, the last thing I'm going to do is sit here and weigh in with my non-expert opinion on the efficacy of Covid masks on an NFL sideline. The single most insufferable thing of the whole subject is the way everyone who knew nothing about medicine beyond how to find the health kits in a first person shooter RPG suddenly became authorities in epidemiology. Since my areas of expertise are 1980s movies and the jingles to every toy commercial from when I was nine, no one needs my analysis on the spread of infectious diseases. Look, we're nine months or so into this and even CDC is changing their mind on the topic every few days. So don't ask me.
What I will say is my standards are pretty basic. The gym and the Trader Joe's I go to require me to wear a mask. They're also really invested in my wearing pants and shoes. So I strap on the face diaper in the same spirit that I don't Porky Pig it around inside their establishments. In other words, I apply the Adam Carolla fart standard, which states that if you wouldn't fart in a particular place, you should wear a mask there. Would you fart in a hotel elevator with other people? No? So wear a mask. Would you get into your room and then let 'er rip? Yes? Then take it off. Really simple stuff.
Which begs the question, would any NFL coach crack one off on the sideline in the middle of a game? Of course. They must do it all the time. By that standard or any other, masking up on the sideline is just window dressing. It's purely symbolic. It doesn't make logical sense to wear a mask for three hours once a week while surrounded by guys you've spent 16 hours a day with since early August.
But now is not the time to apply logical standards. Now is the time for symbols and window dressing. And that's what the league is doing here. Hell, in the Patriots home opener, Mr. Kraft and Jonthan Kraft wore their face coverings the entire game. In their private box in which they were all alone. Outdoors. In an empty stadium. Nobody in the observable universe believes they were at risk of spreading a virus. Or that Kraft the Elder and Kraft the Younger didn't immediately take the masks off in private since they're in the same family. It's all just being done as a gesture.
It hurts me to the core to agree with Roger Goodell about anything. If he told me my mother loved me, I'd admit he's right, but it would be a 9.5 on the Pain Scale. But when he uses the word "message," he's correct. In the NFL the masks are all about sending a message. Which is "Look as us, putting safety above all else. Watch our games and buy our corporate partners' goods and services." And coaches who don't toe the line are going to get whacked hard. It's the same as the way the league went nuts with suspensions and fines when the world was breathing down its neck about CTE. It was a bad time for defenders to be hitting guys in the shoulders or above, and a lot of them paid a hefty price. Literally. It's the same reason why the Saints got over-punished for BountyGate. It was all about messaging.
So while I want to sympathize with Jon Gruden and Sean Payton, who have both had the 'Vid, as well as Vic Fangio, Pete Carroll and Kyle Shanahan, now is not the time for comfort or worrying about how you look. Now is a time to be grateful you've got plays to call, players to coach and officials to bitch at. A time to not give anyone something to criticize you for. And to not be made an example of, which you just allowed Der Commissar to do. You gave him an opening to virtue signal like hell, and he'll take that every time while making his league $1.7 million richer. Agree or not, just wear the goofy things until all this blows over. It'll be a lot cheaper.
Besides, you don't see this guy complaining or getting fined. And he's given the world the first great Halloween costume of 2020.
Charlie Riedel. Shutterstock Images.