In response to Commissioner Roger Goodell’s recent memo imploring the Competition Committee to take meaningful steps to eradicate cheating, the Competition Committee has passed a proposal that, in our view, will do nothing to achieve Goodell’s goal.

Per Bob Glauber of Newsday, team employees are required to report any violation of the rules to the league office.

Why are we suddenly reminded of an oversized German POW camp guard with a weakness for macaroons?

Glauber also says that the Competition Committee’s proposal will require “each team’s senior management executive to report violations by their own club or other teams.”

Again, macaroons.

Both measures seem to be little more than window dressing.  And for good reason.  Since the owners have shown over the years a willingness to reject the recommendations of the Competition Committee, the worst thing that the Competition Committee could have done would have been to craft a stringent set of rules regarding cheating that the owners would have failed to adopt. 

That would have been a dream come true for folks like Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who would have had a field day with the notion that the league’s rule-making body has recommended sweeping changes to the rules regarding cheating (and thus implying that the current rules are inadequate) only to have those rules rejected by the owners.

So if meangingful change is going to occur, it’s going to come from the owners themselves, without the involvement or recommendation of the collection of coaches and execs who don’t want to have their own careers undermined by alienating the 32 folks who control the industry.