New Orleans Saints’ Super Bowl winning head coach Sean Payton has been suspended for a year without pay by the National Football League (NFL) after an investigation into ‘bounty’ schemes which rewarded players for hurting opponents.
Former Saints defensive co-ordinator Gregg Williams was also suspended, indefinitely, while the team was fined $500,000 and will forfeit their selections in the second round of the 2012 and 2013 NFL drafts.
“Let me be clear. There is no place in the NFL for deliberately seeking to injure another player, let alone offering a reward for doing so,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement on Wednesday.