This is your weekly reminder that, even if he’s occasionally obnoxious, at the end of the day, Chad Ochocinco is totally awesome. After Tampa Bay’s Mason Foster laid him out during last week’s Bucs-Patriots game, Ocho had nothing but praise for the rookie linebacker.
Chad Ochocinco Will Pay Your Fine, Just To Mess With Roger Goodell
As he tweeted to Foster the next day, “great hit last night,if u’re fined I’ll reimburse u boss.That’s the way the game should b played...” Then the NFL announced they’d be fining Foster $20,000, and sure enough, Ochocinco reached out to none other than Roger Goodell:
Video of Foster’s hit is after the jump.
The hit looks bad at first--it drew a flag--but upon closer inspection, it seems clean.
And if Ochocinco’s really going to go through with this, he won’t have to put up the full $20,000 that the league fined Foster. As Pro Football Talk notes, the fine will be proportional to his rookie salary:
...since Foster’s 2011 base salary is the rookie minimum of $375,000, he won’t actually lose $20,000. Foster can appeal and get that fine reduced to 25 percent of his weekly pay of $22,058.82, which means his actual fine would be $5,514.71.
So will “Dad” approve? (And can all NFL players start calling Roger Goodell “Dad”? That label’s gotta make Goodell pretty uncomfortable, and that’s always a good thing.)
For the record, it’s against NFL rules for players to pay other players’ fines, and the NFL clarified as much specifically in relation to this case. But you know, here’s to hoping Ochocinco goes through with it. He may not be a game-changer on the field anymore, but he can still make history. If nothing else, he’d be helping a poor rookie, and in the process, he’d be the first player in NFL history to put Roger Goodell in the unenviable positon of fining someone for paying a fine. Your move, Dad.
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