Summary The union filed an appeal on Brady's behalf on Thursday.
LOS ANGELES (AFP) - NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is a potential witness in New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady s appeal of a four-game ban, and shouldn t preside over the appeal, the NFL Players Association said Friday.
The union filed an appeal on Brady s behalf on Thursday, when their demand for an independent arbitrator was quickly answered by the league with confirmation that Goodell himself would hear the case.
If Goodell doesn t reconsider, "the NFLPA and Mr Brady will seek recusal and pursue all available relief to obtain an arbitrator who is not evidently partial," the union wrote in a letter to the league that it made public on Friday.
Brady, a four-time Super Bowl champion, was suspended for the first four games of the upcoming season after third-party investigator Ted Wells found the superstar quarterback was likely "at least generally aware" that team equipment personnel deliberately deflated footballs below league minimums before the AFC Championship Game against the Indianapolis Colts in January.
"Deflategate" dogged the Patriots in the build-up to the Super Bowl in February, with Brady insisting he didn t know why the air pressure in the footballs was low.
NFL vice president Troy Vincent actually handed down Brady s suspension in the wake of the Wells report, but the union is challenging Goodell s right to delegate such discipline.
According to the union, the collective bargaining agreement grants the commissioner "and only the commissioner" the power to discipline players for conduct detrimental to the game.
The union further plans to argue that the severity of the suspension is inconsistent compared to sanctions for other offenses, and that the Wells Report on which the ban is based is "a legally in adequate basis upon which to impose this unprecedented discipline."
The NFLPA wants the league to follow the precedent it set in appointing former federal judge Barbara Jones to hear Ray Rice s appeal of the indefinite suspension he received after punching his future wife.
Jones found that Goodell s decision to increase Rice s punishment after a second, more graphic video of the incident surfaced was arbitrary and the suspension was overturned, although that didn t get Rice his job back with the Baltimore Ravens.
