On Friday of last week, the Washington Post’s Mark Maske reported that under former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams the Washington Redskins had a similar bounty system to the one under investigation in New Orleans. Williams also had a similar system in Buffalo during his time there. Williams’ system rewarded players for hits with “kill shots” (hits that knock a player out of the game) earning a greater dollar amount than other hits.

Former Redskins players Matt Bowen and Phillip Daniels seemed to confirm the policy with their recent statements.

I didn’t think anything of it until a sportswriter friend of mine posted the story on Facebook and called the actions pathetic. Is what the Williams did as a defensive coordinator for the Saints, Redskins and Bills pathetic? Or was he just trying to gain another advantage to give his team a better chance to win games?

At one extreme of the argument is Gregg  Doyel at CBS Sports. He posted a column today calling the acts criminal. He relies partially on his father (a retired judge) to support this notion. Now, my father is a retired physicist not a retired judge so I won’t comment on the criminality of Gregg Williams’ actions. However, I’m not sure the story will reach a conclusion when Williams is escorted to prison.

On the other side of the argument are those who liken football players to gladiators. They say football is a contact sport and these players are taught from a young age to be aggressive. They are taught to hit as hard as they can; to fly around the field and cause havoc. Injuries occur all the time in football and it is the nature of the game.

Let me attempt to find a middle ground here. I think many are bothered that the bounty scheme amounts to “planned” injury or damage. Everyone would acknowledge that the nature of the sport of football (and many others) is planned collision. This human demolition derby ensures that individuals get injured.

Injuries and physical damage occur in football (and in just about any other corner of the world commensurate with the implied risk of the activity). Gregg Williams (and those who aided and abetted him) increased the implied risk of an activity without informing the other parties in the planned collisions thus destroying the integrity of the sport. What players are trained to do is irrelevant because the assumption is that all players are taught the same thing (or similar) and each person walks on to the field with full information regarding those tactics.

I agree that it is pathetic that one human being would pay another human being to injure, maim or indeed end another person’s career. Is it unexpected in a sport such as football? No (see Ryan, Buddy who incidentally Gregg Williams worked for).

Are these people gladiators? Sure, but know that gladiators were not what Hollywood has made them out to be. They were generally shunned or derided and more often than not came from the prison or slave population. And at least gladiators were armed – the literal meaning of gladiator is “swordsman” (thank you three years of high school Latin).

The opponents in games against Gregg Williams’ defenses were not properly armed to fight a fair fight. Roman gladiators had a better chance. Williams and the teams he worked for should be punished with a sentence not yet seen in the NFL.