Cris Carter Comes Clean on Bounties

One of the many things that we have been hearing as story after story gets printed about the scandal involving bounties and the New Orleans Saints is that everyone does it. Now of course we will never have anyone else come forward and admit it; at least not anyone that is currently playing (after seeing all the suspensions get handed out).

A number of players from the past have come forward to say that they knew of no bounties in their day. Some have approached it a little differently, saying instead that bounties were not necessary for them to want to smack people around on the field.

One player has now come forward and admitted that he did partake in a bounty system during his playing days--former Minnesota Viking wide receiver Cris Carter.

Carter admitted during an interview that he did indeed place bounties on guys during games. The way he described them it sounds as if he used them in order to encourage his teammates to block/take out certain players so that they would not hit him.

“I’d tell one of them guards, ‘Hey man, this dude is after me, man.  Bill Romanowski.’  He told me he’s gonna me out before the game, in warmups.  No problem.  ‘I’m gonna end your career, Carter.’  No problem.  I put a little change on his head before the game.  Protect myself, protect my family.  That’s the league that I grew up in.”

He went on to state in a rather emphatic manner that he was not the only player to put bounties on guys.

Why he decided to come forward now is kind of interesting and totally left up to speculation for the time being. The NFL has made it clear that the idea of using bounties for incentives or like Carter did, for protection, is a bad idea and not one anyone should do.

However, if the NFL wants to get serious about banning bounties they may want to severely limit what incentive clauses that players are allowed to have in their contracts since many of them are the same thing as a bounty, just worded a lot nicer and official.

(In case your too young to have ever seen Cris Carter play...)

Article by Travis Pulver