On Sunday, Odell Beckham Jr. wore special cleats as a tribute to Craig Sager. The intention was to auction the shoes off after the game and donate the proceeds to the Sager Strong foundation.
Odell Beckham Jr. says he was fined $18,000 for wearing Craig Sager cleats for charity
Come on, NFL.
Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images
Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports
That is a great tribute and nice thing overall. Except there was one problem. The Sager shoes didn’t meet the NFL uniform requirements. The NFL let players wear tribute cleats, but that was only for one week. This wasn’t that week, so Beckham ended up being fined $18,000 for his Sager cleats.
He revealed as much in an Instagram comment to DeSean Jackson — who was also fined for cleats.
Don’t worry I got fined 18k for Craig Sager cleats that were auction off the cleats to the highest bidder and donating the proceeds to his cancer research. 18k like it’s nothing to them, no waring to take them off or anything noTHING!
The $18,000 fine this week comes after Beckham openly questioned how much he would be fined if he had jumped into the Salvation Army container like Ezekiel Elliott did.
The NFL has strict rules for what is an acceptable uniform. They’ve adjusted those slightly recently to allow players to promote causes important to them. Even those allowances, however, come with restrictions. Uniform rules are understandable, but at some point some common sense might be needed to avoid punishing players for promoting and supporting good causes — like cancer research.
