It was only a few days ago I went on a tirade saying how absurd the revote for the NFL defensive ROY award.  It was revealed that Brian Cushing the winner on the first vote tested positive for performance enhancing drugs.

Here are my original thoughts on the issue:

Even though, Cushing claims that he never took a steroid substance; the NFL still determined whatever he took was deemed in violation of the substance abuse policy.  This has resulted in Cushing receiving a four game suspension to start next season.

The whole point of the revote was to give the AP and its voting members a chance to make their decisions based on the knowledge of Cushing receiving his suspension for a banned substance.

With all that knowledge nothing changed.  What a waste of time and joke.  Seriously what was the point of this revote?  Or most importantly what is it saying about the suspension and drug use?

Obviously Goodell wants the NFL to have best image and reputation possible.  Anytime someone has used PED’s and still receives accolades from the media it clearly doesn’t sit well with him.  That is why they wanted to have the revote; to essentially strip away his award.

Well guess what? That didn’t happen.  So clearly this means that the voters don’t care about PED’s when it comes to voting; otherwise he wouldn’t have won the award on the revote. Or they believe that the substance that he was found guilty of taking really isn’t that big of a deal; and the NFL drug policy is a little bit too strict, after all it was never revealed that he was using steroids.

Either way the entire revote is an absolute mockery to the system.  If they were serious about sending a message enough of the voters would have not put Cushing on their ballot, resulting in him losing the award.  That is what I thought was going to happen, otherwise they wouldn’t have even had this entire process.

This isn’t the first time this situation has occurred with the NFL and this exact award; the same exact scenario took place in 2002 with Julius Peppers and 2005 with Shawne Merriman.  Both of them were found guilty of using a banned substance after the vote which led to the rookie defensive poy award.  How come they never went through the same process for those players?

Is it getting to a point now where the NFL is getting fed up with players using banned substances and still receiving awards?  I believe so, and that is why they wanted the revote this time around.  The entire concept and idea completely blew up in their face with the result not changing.

What kind of message is sent to the players and league after today’s debacle?  You can use banned substances and still win a premiere award with everyone having full knowledge of the situation. A joke.

The NFL needs to have more consistency when it comes to how they evaluate players for awards.  Like I said in my previous rant the Patriots were found guilty of spy gate and received no repercussions for any team or player awards.  Why is drug use deemed to be a higher level of cheating then spying on your opponents?

Going forward there needs to be a more structured outline and set of rules when it comes to voting and determining who wins these awards.  If they want to factor in drug testing the results should be available prior to voting; so they can factor in those results.  If there are other forms of cheating like the spy gate scenario it should receive the same treatment when factoring in the votes.

I will repeat it again, you can’t change the past.  That is life, once the history book is written there is no turning back. If the NFL can’t get their act in gear with voting that’s too bad you settle with the original vote.

It’s appalling they had a second chance; just imagine if we could revote on every election in our society after finding out facts that were not available before the vote the world would be a different place.

Written by

Chad Margulius