While impassioned, the fundamental premise of your argument is wrong.  The commissioner has the power to hear a case, meet out discipline, and then be the arbitrator in the appeal.  That is not in dispute.  At the same time, there are certain statutory and precedents that guide his RESPONSIBILITIES in exercising that power.  

 

In his ruling Judge Berman acknowledges the normal deference to collectively bargained arbitration.  At the same time he cited specific case law putting forth the conditions necessary for Judicial intervention against an arbitrator award.  Those include but are not limited to: The arbitrator award being completely divorced from the Underlying CBA.  What does that mean?

 

That means that yes Rodger Goodell is the chief of police.  One of his deputies can pull you over for speeding.  They can issue you a citation.  He can then sentence you.  When you appeal the sentence you still have to appeal to the Chief of Police, and he can choose to reduce vacate or hold his own award.  What you can't do is take a citation for speeding, and sentence me for sexual assault and that's EXACTLY what the league did in this case.  

 

To get down into the minutia, the Judge cited a concept in arbitrator awards called "law of the shop" meaning that the arbitrator is duty bound to be fair and consistent in his awards among similarly situated players.  The commissioner ACKNOWLEDGED this underlying responsibility in his own words.  The inflation or deflation of footballs is a violation of playing rule 2 and carries a penalty of a suggested but not limited to fine.  There is no leeway under rule two for an arbitrator to award a suspension.  Goodell tried to leap across the field and claim that the only similarly situated player to Brady in this case was a PED user.  That sounds great on talk radio, but that was never going to hold up in the court of law.  Jay Feeley talked about a situation where his ball boy was found in violation of the same playing rule and ultimately fired.  They never even pursued discipline against Feely.  That fundamentally obliterates and claim of fairness in application of the rules regarding equipment.  

 

The world was captivated by this idea, "that well being uncooperative is a subjective term so the suspension would have to stand because you can't tell the arbitrator how to feel"  What they forgot were the direct words of Paul Tagliabue cited by the federal Judge "that in the 40 years he had been associated with the league he had NEVER seen a player suspended for being uncooperative."

 

That's not even getting into the blatant conflict of interest in the creation of the Wells report between the league and the Paul Weiss law firm.  That's not even getting into the bogus analysis during halftime.  

 

Just go back, the judges ruling is based on the idea that "If he did everything you say he did, when I READ THE CBA that you cite as the genesis of your authority the infraction of being generally aware of ball deflation by others does not denote a violation that justifies a four game suspension based on the LAW OF THE SHOP and the requirement that professional football players be given NOTICE OF THEIR DISCIPLINE!"

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