While banging out our item from earlier this afternoon regarding the next wave in the NFL’s effort to crack down on player misconduct (i.e., punishing the teams who harbor turds), we fired off an e-mail to NFL spokesman Greg Aiello inquiring as to whether any team has been penalized when one of its players has been arrested within the past year.

Aiello said that it hasn’t happened, but he also pointed out to us an April 29 story from Rick Gosselin of the Dallas Morning News regarding the fact that teams have been told that they now face consequences in this regard.

For starters, the league will require teams to pay as a fine a portion of the salary that would have been paid to a player who otherwise is on suspension, and thus not getting paid.

“If you have an individual player that has discipline from the personal conduct policy, a portion of that salary is going to be withheld as a fine,” Commissioner Roger Goodell said, according to Gosselin.  ”And that’s going to escalate.”

Goodell also said that he hasn’t ruled out “competitive consequences,” such as the forfeiture of draft picks.

Frankly, we think the only way to get the teams’ attention is to include draft picks in the discussion.  It should be easy to put together a formula that allows for a bit of flexibility but that will prevent cries of bias or prejudice for or against any specific team(s).

The formula also needs to take into account whether the team knew or should have known that the player has had any convictions or guilty pleas before signing or drafting him.  If the team knew or should have known that the player was a potential problem, then the penalty should be more significant.

We also think that incentives should be made available to teams who don’t experience problems with player conduct.  Supplemental draft picks would be a possibility.  Another approach would be to give teams who have emerged from the prior league year with no incidents priority placement in one of the middle rounds of the draft, such as round four or five.