Spitting in an opponent's face is on a par with stepping in front of King Kamehameha's shadow in 19th Century Hawaii.
While the latter brought an automatic death penalty, the former should bring at least a one-game suspension, in addition to ejection from the present game.
Since a vastly inordinate number of these most egregious incidents occur in same-division games (do you honestly believe that Jalen Carter would have spat on, say, Justin Herbert?) maybe it's time for the NFL reconsider its divisional and conference structures — especially since college football just created "super-conferences" consisting of 16, 17, or even 18 teams, and only about half of them even play each other once, let alone twice, in a given season.
And with an 18th game expected to be added to the regular season any day now, there will be enough games to go to a 16-team AFC and a 16-team NFC — with no "realignment" as such — with every team playing its 15 conference rivals once each, plus three interconference games, apportioned as follows:
Prior Year's Finish in Conference------------------Interconference Opponents
........................1...................................................................1-8-9
........................2..................................................................2-7-10
........................3..................................................................3-6-11
........................4..................................................................4-5-12
........................5..................................................................4-5-13
........................6..................................................................3-6-14
........................7..................................................................2-7-15
........................8..................................................................1-8-16
........................9..................................................................1-9-16
.......................10.................................................................2-10-15
.......................11.................................................................3-11-14
.......................12.................................................................4-12-13
.......................13.................................................................5-12-13
.......................14.................................................................6-11-14
.......................15.................................................................7-10-15
.......................16..................................................................8-9-16
The above interconference pairings would apply to Year 1 only; in subsequent years, the pairings would be determined in such a way that two teams not in the same conference will always play each other every certain number of years (i.e., seven or eight), except that the two #1 teams in each conference would always play each other the following year, as would the two #2 teams, and so on (the league essentially did this from 1995 through 2001, using alphabetical order to determine both the matchups themselves, and where the games would be played).
We're really the only country that does this "division" business: in the United Kingdom, their Premier League has 20 teams, and every team simply plays every other team twice — once at home and once away — for 38 games all told. And there are no playoffs: the team with the most points at the end of the season — with three points for a win and one for a draw (they don't call it a "tie" over there) is the champion.
Roger Goodell seems to be dragging his feet about how to deal with Jalen Carter. But sooner or later, he must make a decision.
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