Are These 5 Patriots Championship Rings Now Tarnished?

[btcarfagno]

I heard an interesting thought as to the punishment that would stop all of this BS really fast.

A fine of the team won't do diddly. What will the fine be? $500,000? Maybe $1 million? The Pats made that back and 10x more by winning the Ravens game, being able to host another playoff game, and getting to the Super Bowl. That sounds like pretty good risk/reward to me. A suspension of the head coach during a game is meaningless. If he can have no contact with the team for however many weeks I suppose that would be somewhat interesting, although knowing Belichick he would just find a way around that too.

What would absolutely stop this and any other inane shenanigans in the future is to hit the team with a salary cap hit. $15 million for 2015, $10 million for 2016 and $5 million for 2017. If the union bitches about it then disperse the amounts among the other teams, thus the total league wide figures would not change. now THAT would put an immediate stop to all of this REALLY quickly.

Tom C