Quote:
Originally Posted by You Need a Thneed
The hard thing to do is finding any evidence that it was deliberate. That it "looks deliberate", certainly does not count...
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Quite to the contrary, does not every decision made by the Board of Player Safety—which is not the same body who will be deciding Wideman's case—hinge on whether or not the incident "looked deliberate"?
I have yet to hear a player actually enter into record that a dangerous hit was made with the deliberate intent to injure another player, or, more finely, that he targeted another player's head with his elbow, shoulder, or what-have-you. Just like Wideman, there is almost universal denial from every suspended player that the outcome of his actions was in one way or another deliberate.
In virtually every case of a suspendible hit, all the deciding body has to go on is what appears in the video record, and that frequently requires a fair amount of interpretation.