Unhappy Suh plans to appeal $20K NFL fine for hit on Dalton

ALLEN PARK, Mich. -- Detroit Lions defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh acknowledged Wednesday that he's clearly "not happy" with the $20,000 fine the NFL slapped on him for his hit on Cincinnati Bengals rookie quarterback Andy Dalton in last week's preseason opener.

Suh plans to appeal the punishment -- "Who wouldn't?" he asked rhetorically -- and said this incident won't impact the way he plays football.

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"I'm not going to stop playing hard," Suh said. "I owe it to my fans and to my teammates and coaches. ... There's a reason why football is football."

Suh was fined twice last year for hits on Chicago's Jay Cutler during the regular season and Cleveland's Jake Delhomme in a preseason game.

Suh's checking account can absorb the latest hit. His five-year contract is worth $40 million guaranteed and as much as $68 million, though the NFL has increased the fine each time.

"Twenty grand? For the preseason? They're trying to send a message," Lions wide receiver Nate Burleson told The Associated Press.

Suh was fined $7,500 for what he did to Delhomme, grabbing his face mask, twisting it and slamming him to the ground. He was docked $15,000 for shoving Cutler hard and high in the back from behind during a game last December.

Detroit's second preseason game is Friday at Cleveland. Browns offensive tackle Joe Thomas said he and his teammates are mindful of what Suh can do.

"Everybody sees it, and it's the back of your head, but it's not really something you worry about," Thomas told The AP. "Most of our focus and attention is between the whistles, and it seems he's getting a name for himself for what happens after the whistle."

Suh compared his situation to what recently retired NBA star Shaquille O'Neal went through early in his career, enduring lots of foul trouble for being much bigger and stronger than opponents but ultimately persevering.

Earlier on Wednesday, Suh let be known just how angry he was in a post on Twitter.

"$20,000REALLY???!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! #NFL #BIGFAIL," he wrote.

But the Lions rallied around Suh and came to his defense.

Quarterback Matthew Stafford, who has taken his share of tough hits and suffered more than his share of injuries, said he believes Suh's play is misunderstood.

"He's kind of gotten a bad rap early on here," Stafford said after a spirited practice. "He plays hard, and he plays all the way to the whistle, but he doesn't hit guys late.

"He doesn't hit in the helmet. He always plays hard, and that's the way you're supposed to play football. I'm glad I don't have to go against him. But he's just playing up to the whistle."

Lions coach Jim Schwartz declined to directly comment on the fine, but he was asked about whether or not Suh's unprecedented size and speed lead to his hits perhaps appearing more violent than they are intended to be.

"It does look different when he does it," Schwartz said, "but it is what it is. The league puts it on the defensive player to know when the ball is gone."

Schwartz noted there is a "fine line" between curbing a player's intensity and style of play and going too far in the other direction.

One Lions official said the organization isn't inclined to address the infractions with Suh and isn't overly concerned. The Lions realize what a smart player Suh is, as well as his overall intellect. They believe Suh will figure out "where the line is" for himself.

Lions defensive coordinator Gunther Cunningham said he had a 40-minute chat with Suh on Wednesday, and it was as enjoyable as any in his 30-year coaching career. Cunningham was adamant that Suh's ability and prowess make him impossible to block and works against him in instances like this.

"No one has ever played like this at defensive tackle," Cunningham said.

"There is no malicious intent on anything," he added.

Follow Jason La Canfora on Twitter @JasonLaCanfora

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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NCAA rejects USC's appeal to reduce Bush sanctions

LOS ANGELES -- USC acknowledges its football program committed NCAA violations, most involving current New Orleans Saints running back Reggie Bush, while building a West Coast dynasty over the past decade. The Trojans simply believe last year's nearly unprecedented punishment didn't fit the crime.

Athletic director Pat Haden wasn't surprised to learn Thursday that the NCAA disagrees.

While USC learned it had lost its appeal, ex-RB Reggie Bush was thousands of miles away in London, joining other celebrities for the start of a seven-day, 3,000-mile road rally. More ...

The NCAA flatly rejected USC's appeal to reduce sanctions imposed on its storied football program, keeping in place the harshest penalties leveled against a school in a quarter-century.

USC must serve the second year of its two-year postseason ban next fall, making the Trojans ineligible for the first Pac-12 title game or a bowl game. USC also will lose 30 scholarships over the next three years, giving them just 15 available scholarships per season -- 10 below the normal yearly limit -- until 2015.

Haden led a chorus of exasperated resignation at Heritage Hall after the NCAA's final ruling on its punitive sanctions for a variety of misdeeds surrounding Bush, a Heisman Trophy-winning tailback.

"We have to look at ourselves in the mirror here," said Haden, who took charge in the athletic department last July. "We could have and should have done things better. We had a player who knowingly did things wrong. We are not innocent here. We deserve some penalties, but it's the severity of the penalties that we think are unfair."

As disappointment spread throughout campus and in the Pac-10 offices upstate, the Trojans also expressed relief their half-decade of NCAA drama finally was over. Haden confirmed USC won't sue the NCAA to further contest the most extensive sanctions handed out since SMU football was shut down in 1987 for two years by the so-called "death penalty."

"Clearly, I'm very disappointed, but I'm not surprised," Haden said. "I think the appeals committee is a group of fair-minded folks. We just vehemently disagree with the result, with how they saw our argument, and how past precedent didn't play a role in their decision."

After a brief team meeting in which coach Lane Kiffin cautioned his players not to spout off about the decision on social media, the Trojans took the expected news in stride. Haden had predicted bad news for the players, who were years away from attending USC when Bush apparently accepted lavish illegal benefits from two aspiring sports marketers.

"Just like Pat and the rest of the university, we don't agree, but we'll deal with what we're dealt," quarterback Matt Barkley said.

The NCAA refused to comment beyond its public report, which said it found "no basis on which to reverse the pertinent findings."

The NCAA conducted a four-year investigation primarily into the murky dealings around Bush, who returned his Heisman last year after the NCAA's ruling. USC was banned from postseason play last season after going 8-5 in Kiffin's first campaign, but the scholarship limitations were postponed on appeal.

The violation took place during the tenure of Pete Carroll, who left the school following the 2009 season to become head coach of the Seattle Seahawks.

"I feel so badly for our seniors in particular, who have had two years of this and had really nothing to do with what went on," Haden said.

BCS executive director Bill Hancock said in an email Thursday that the presidential oversight committee and conference commissioners will consider whether to strip USC of the 2004 BCS title it won by beating Oklahoma, 55-19, in the Orange Bowl. He said there is no timetable set for that decision to be made.

"The championship would not be awarded to another team; it would simply be vacated," he wrote.

The Associated Press will not vacate the championship it awarded USC in 2004.

Pac-10 Commissioner Larry Scott echoed the USC leadership's comments, saying the conference is "extremely disappointed with today's decision."

"I respect USC's decision to take the high ground and not pursue any further recourse to the NCAA ruling," Scott said. "At the same time, I fully expect that every NCAA member institution be held to the same high standards. These sanctions, notably the postseason ban, have a devastating effect on current student-athletes, most of whom were in elementary and junior high school at the time of the alleged violations. To me, that is a source of great frustration and disappointment."

Indeed, the NCAA's ruling should send a shiver down the collective spine at Ohio State, which is under investigation for multiple well-documented misdeeds under coach Jim Tressel. Five Buckeyes already have been suspended for the first five games of the upcoming season for selling memorabilia to the owner of a local tattoo parlor, but the scandal seems to widen in scope weekly.

USC President Max Nikias said he believes the NCAA has harmed the credibility of its decision-making process with its ruling.

"We are very concerned that the historical value of case precedent and the right to fair process in the NCAA adjudicative process, both in terms of the ability of an institution to defend itself or prove an abuse of discretion on appeal, have been substantially eroded," Nikias said.

Since the NCAA applied a new standard to its appeals process in 2008, only one of 11 appeals of sanctions has been successful. When Haden and other USC officials went before the NCAA's Infractions Appeals Committee in January, they asked the panel to cut the harshest penalties in half, taking away just 15 scholarships and making the Trojans eligible for a bowl game this fall.

USC's seniors are allowed to transfer to another school without sitting out a season, a sanction that Kiffin has criticized as "free agency." A few players left the Trojans after the sanctions were handed down last year, but most were backups unhappy with playing time.

"I haven't heard anything" about seniors planning to transfer, said Barkley, a junior and a two-year starter.

"That doesn't mean guys aren't thinking about it, but given the vibe of the team, it doesn't seem like guys are going to do that," Barkley said. "It looks like guys want to be here, want to face the challenge and deal with it."

Last summer, the NCAA ruled Bush and basketball player O.J. Mayo had received improper benefits under the administration of athletic director Mike Garrett, Carroll and basketball coach Tim Floyd, who have all left the university. In addition to the football sanctions and self-imposed sanctions on the basketball program, USC was put on four years of probation.

Kiffin, who replaced his former boss five months before the NCAA's penalties, hasn't allowed the looming sanctions to stop him from getting commitments from eight top prospects for his 2012 recruiting class.

"I am disappointed for our players, our fans and our staff that another bowl game and now a possible Pac-12 championship game has been taken away from them," Kiffin said. "We have been operating with these sanctions for a year now, and have felt their effects on multiple fronts. We will continue to execute the plan we have in place to make the most of the hand with which we have been dealt.

"I am proud of how our players have performed on the field and represented us off the field under very difficult and trying circumstances."

USC has made wholesale changes in its athletic department during Haden's short tenure, dramatically beefing up its compliance staff and working toward the squeaky-clean image coveted by Haden, the former USC quarterback and Rhodes Scholar.

But the formidable recruiting skills of Kiffin and defensive coordinator Ed Orgeron will be tested by scholarship limitations for the near future. Kiffin and Orgeron stocked up on players earlier this year while the sanctions were under appeal, signing 22 recruits to letters of intent or scholarship agreements shortly after eight additional players enrolled in January.

Kiffin, formerly head coach of the Oakland Raiders and at the University of Tennessee, said he has been "impressed with the reception we have received from recruits. They understand the value of a USC degree and the opportunities afforded them by playing football here."

Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press

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Players appeal for end to NFL lockout in late-night court filing

MINNEAPOLIS -- Players who sued the NFL for alleged antitrust violations liken the league to a "cartel" in their latest court filing, again urging an appeals court to lift the lockout.

In arguments filed in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, just minutes before Friday's midnight deadline, attorneys for the players reiterated their argument that the NFL has violated antitrust laws. They also argued the lockout has imposed immediate, career-ending threatening harm on players and could deprive the public of the 2011 NFL season.

Carucci: Lockout hits training camps

"The players face immediate, continuing, severe irreparable injury from unlawful conduct orchestrated to force them to re-unionize against their will and make immense financial concessions," the players' attorneys wrote. "The NFL, by contrast, claims only a temporary loss of leverage by members of a cartel that is no longer entitled to any exemption from the antitrust laws."

The longer the fight over how to divvy up $9 billion in annual revenue drags on, the closer the league and players come to missing games. The first preseason game is scheduled for Aug. 7, and the regular-season opener between the New Orleans Saints and Green Bay Packers is set for Sept. 8.

In Friday's filing, the players reiterated that the decision to dissolve their union was their lawful right, and the absence of a collective bargaining agreement shouldn't stop the NFL's ability to "conduct professional football." And, the players argued, the harm they would suffer isn't comparable to the league's argument that it would suffer an "intangible blow to their 'negotiating position' and 'leverage.' "

"The overwhelming inequity in that imbalance is patently obvious," the players' attorneys wrote.

The players have argued all along that their careers are being harmed by the work stoppage -- they can't work out, or sign contracts with any of the 32 teams while the lockout persists. A federal judge in Minnesota agreed and lifted the lockout April 25, but the league appealed.

The appeals court reversed U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson's decision just four days later. And on Monday, the appellate court ruled the lockout can stay in place until a full appeal is heard on whether it is legal. That hearing is set for June 3.

The players received some support Friday from other professional players and fans. The unions for baseball, basketball and hockey players filed a legal brief saying the lockout should be lifted because athletes' careers are short, and the loss of even part of a season causes personal and professional injuries for which they can't be compensated.

In their filing, the unions for Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League wrote, "there is no off-season in professional sports -- only the portion of the work year during which no games are played." The unions said that part of the year brings opportunities -- such as the option to change cities, teams or the trajectory of one's career.

Also Friday, a nonprofit group that has been fighting sport work stoppages said the lockout should be lifted. The Sports Fans Coalition, which says it gives fans a voice on public policy issues and fights for fan access to games, said in a legal brief that the lockout isn't in the best interest of fans, who pay billions of dollars to see their teams perform.

The players' attorneys argued: "The NFL does not suffer irreparable harm from operating the game of football -- especially at a profit."

"Here, there is no question that the interest of the public -- the fans, stadium workers, parking lot attendants, sports bars and restaurants, and local governments -- favors an injunction to allow football to proceed on whatever lawful terms the NFL Defendants collectively impose," the players' attorneys wrote.

The group of players suing the league -- including star quarterbacks Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Drew Brees -- have said the lockout is inflicting irreparable harm on their brief playing careers by preventing them from working out at team headquarters, holding full practices with teammates and coaches and jeopardizing games.

Their attorneys wrote that suggesting monetary damages, even triple damages, would fully redress the harm to players "ignores the reality of the game."

The NFL has argued in its appeal that lifting the labor lockout without a new contract in place would allow better-off teams to sign the best players, tipping the NFL's competitive balance and damaging the league.

The league also said that lifting the lockout with no labor deal in place would cause chaos, with teams trying to make decisions on signing free agents and making trades under a set of rules that could change drastically under a new agreement.

The league says the union's move to decertify after the initial bargaining talks broke down is a sham; that Nelson doesn't have the jurisdiction to lift the lockout; and that she should have waited for a decision from the National Labor Relations Board before issuing that ruling.

The players disagree with all those points.

They argued that by decertifying, every player gave up many rights, including having union representation at grievances, and the right to collectively bargain and strike. Now, players seek the protections of federal antitrust laws that limit monopolies.

The players also have a federal antitrust lawsuit against the league pending before Nelson. And attorneys for the players filed documents in U.S. District Court on Friday, opposing a league request for more time to respond to the claim. The league has argued that it shouldn't have to respond to the lawsuit until the appeal over the lockout is resolved.

But the players say the lawsuit will go forward whether or not the lockout is lifted and that the NFL's request for an extension is "yet another deliberate step in their campaign to crush the players by extending the lockout for as long as they can."

Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press

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High Court refuses to hear NFL appeal in StarCaps case

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court won't stop a Minnesota state court from getting involved in a fight between the NFL and Minnesota Vikings defensive linemen Kevin Williams and Pat Williams over violations of the league's policy on performance-enhancing substances.

The high court refused Monday to hear an appeal from the National Football League.

The players took the weight-loss supplement StarCaps, which contained an unlisted but banned diuretic that can mask the presence of steroids. The federal courts threw out the players' appeal of their NFL suspensions, but said there were issues that should be considered in state court.

The NFL wanted the entire lawsuit thrown out, saying the players' union contract and federal law trump state law in this case.

The two players argued that the NFL's testing violated Minnesota workplace laws.

"It's a wonderful victory for Kevin and Pat, and it's a wonderful victory for employees in every state throughout the country," the Williamses' attorney, Peter Ginsberg, told The Associated Press. "And hopefully it will make the NFL more sensitive to what state Legislatures decide is important for the safety of their employees."

Ginsberg said a hearing is scheduled for Nov. 17 before the Minnesota Court of Appeals on whether a permanent injunction should be issued against the league so that the Williamses, who are not related, "can play out their careers without worrying the NFL is going to suspend them for this ingestion of StarCaps."

Ginsberg said a permanent injunction is needed because eventually the preliminary injunction allowing the Williamses to continue playing will expire.

The Williamses have been playing for nearly two years, going back to the NFL's initial announcement in December 2008. Both have been playing this season.

Minnesota state law requires that an employer give an employee who tests positive for drug use the right to explain the positive test. The NFL's policy says a positive result won't be excused because a player was unaware he was taking a prohibited substance.

Attorneys for the NFL had argued it should be allowed to enforce its anti-doping policy because it was a product of the NFL's collective bargaining agreement with the NFL Players Association. The agreement is governed by federal labor law, which they argued pre-empted the state laws.

The case is National Football League v. Williams, 09-1380.

Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press

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