Bad news struck today for us Redskins fans as the Skins appeal against the league for taking 36 million of our salary cap dollars over this year and next was denied by a judge. I wrote an article about my feelings on this and just the general summary of the whole situation here, but basically the Skins were punished for front loading the contracts of Haynesworth (the gift that keeps on giving) and Hall in 2010 because it was going to be the last uncapped year and that was frowned upon by the NFL and apparently all teams were given warnings but there was no official rules regarding the matter.

Andrew Brandt of ESPN explains why the appeal was denied and the main reason is because everybody involved were against the Skins. The commissioner, NFLPA, and the other teams all were together on this unwritten issue so the Skins apparently had little chance. I am not a lawyer and I won’t claim to be one but this all seems a little fishy to me. I understand that what the Skins did was not right and they probably deserved some sort of slap on the wrist but a 36 million dollar penalty? That is a lot of money. To put it in perspective, we just signed Pierre Garcon for about 8 million a year. We could have had 4 or 5 Garcon’s over the next couple of years taken away from us because of this which could have a huge effect on the roster.

I still stand by the analogy about this situation that I heard from Ivan Carter on Sports Talk Live that went something like this:  he likened it to a free all you can eat buffet. At these things people usually take one or two trips and get their fair share untill they are full. Than there are those obnoxious jerks (usually me) who go and take 5 trips and take all the food they can get and end up taking some home with them. Are these guys right in doing this? No, thats not being right to the restaurant and it’s an un-written rule but they did it and it’s not against the rules so their should be no repercussions. So 2 weeks later the guys get a bill in the mail from that restaurant for $250 for all of the food that they ate. Even though the managers of the restaurant watched them and allowed them to eat as much food as they wanted and then 2 weeks later they send them a bill because they deemed too much was eaten even though there was no rules in the restaurant about it and they said it was a free buffet. I just thought this analogy was good because even though what Snyder did wasn’t right in my eyes, it still didn’t break any rules and shouldn’t be punished nearly this severely, if at all.

I am not the only one who feels this way but as long as Roger Goodell is in charge and he has everybody by his side, it will be tough to ever overturn this ruling.