Terrelle Pryor, Cedric Benson Punishments Prove NFL Commish Is a Hypocrite

Cincinnati Bengals running back Cedric Benson has turned himself in to authorities in Austin, Texas to begin serving his 20-day jail sentence stemming from an assault charge he picked up in 2010, rather than doing so during his bye week in October, as previously reported.

Though Benson's incident occurred before the NFL lockout, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell will not be suspending Benson for any games this season.

Goodell's doling out of discipline has been arbitrary, to say the least.

Sometimes, Goodell says that he will not consider suspensions until a player's case has been resolved.

Lately, Goodell has chosen not to suspend players, such as Tampa Bay Buccaneer Aqib Talib or Tennessee Titan Kenny Britt, for poor conduct during the lockout. This is a rare wise decision from the commissioner.

At the very least, it relieves him of the inevitable pressure brought down upon his office by the NFLPA.

The Players' Association has made it clear they would actively appeal any suspensions that result from player behavior during the lockout, considering that they were not covered by any specific official conduct policy when there wasn't a valid Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Benson's situation is very different from those of Talib and Britt, however. Benson's legal woes come from May of 2010, prior to the lockout, and thus should be fair game for a suspension.

Except Benson told Goodell that he was the real assault victim and was wrongly charged by his accuser, and Goodell believed his side of the story. That is its own type of ridiculous in its own right—can you imagine if every player facing suspension came to the commissioner with this explanation?

However, the decision by Goodell to not suspend Benson, while upholding his five-game suspension of former Ohio State and now Oakland Raiders quarterback Terrelle Pryor, serves as another example of not only Goodell's hypocrisy, but also the arbitrary and totalitarian nature of his discipline policies.

Pryor's situation is a bit muddled, and I'm sure Goodell likes it that way. At first, it seemed that the NFL was acting as a proxy discipline arm of the NCAA and simply transferred Pryor's five-game college football suspension to his first NFL season.

Eventually, though, the real reason for Pryor's suspension rose out of the mire—he essentially "violated the spirit of the supplemental draft" by declaring for it under the pall of his NCAA suspension.

There is another way to solve that issue if you're Goodell—don't declare Pryor eligible.

If he truly damaged the spirit of the supplemental draft, why even allow him to enter it just to punish him because of it?

Furthermore, in 2009, there was a similar situation to Pryor's surrounding the supplemental draft.

From Yahoo! Sports' Doug Farrar:

"

In 2009, Kentucky defensive end Jeremy Jarmon (notes) was suspended for his senior year after taking what the NCAA decreed to be an illegal diuretic. Jarmon was ruled ineligible, and the NFL allowed him into the supplemental draft with no carryover punishment. He was drafted in the third round of that draft by the Washington Redskins and currently plays for the Denver Broncos.

"

So why was Pryor punished and Jarmon wasn't?

Maybe because a casualty of Pryor's NCAA violations was his former head coach, Jim Tressel. Maybe Goodell just does not like Pryor. Maybe Goodell just felt like it.

Whatever the reason, there is clearly no standard for Goodell's punishments, which is ridiculous, hypocritical, wrong and, sadly, nothing new.

With every potential discipline case that crosses Goodell's desk, I hope that this will be the one that follows—or sets—a clear standard, something that doesn't contradict his behavior toward players last year, last week or last month.

But it never happens. Instead, Commissioner Goodell looks more and more like a powerful man in a powerful position, smiting his detractors at random.