I listen to the Mike and Mike show on ESPN radio in the morning while getting up and heading to work. Today, Mike Golic, the ex-Philadelphia Eagle was trying to explain how side bets/bounties work in the locker room and why they are not bad things.

He failed miserably on part two.

This all comes about as the NFL is investigating the Green Bay Packers on side bounties made before the Minnesota Viking game, basically promising money if the Packers defense held Adrian Pedersen under 100 yards rushing. Pedersen, of course, got injured during the game.

Now, I think what Golic was trying to justify is a bounty like the one above: hold someone under x amount of yards, intercept the football x times, etc. get some pocket cash for dinner that night. I don't really see an issue with a bounty like that. In fact, in the card game of Legend of the Five Rings has national bounties for like 'highest ranked Dragon player, I'll give X'.

However, a bounty like 'take Pedersen out', I have issues with. Because of his rambling, I don't know if Golic feels the same about paying to deliberately hurt someone. He implied that the infamous 'bounty game' between the Eagles and Cowboys was 'okay'. That game featured one of those 'cause injury' bounties I have a problem with (in this case, it was a bounty on the kicker who had switched teams in the offseason).

This sort of bounty needs to be, at minimum, discouraged. At most, whomever made the bounty needs to be charged in criminal court for assault.