Ryan was not the only one who found humor in the unsportsmanlike hit. “The NFL Today,” the pregame show on CBS, devoted a long segment the next week to what became known as the Bounty Bowl. The host, Brent Musburger, chuckled at Ryan’s remarks. “Oh, the rips you can make in 30 seconds,” he said. Irv Cross asserted that the Eagles had a reward system for big plays, not a bounty system. “What they are is aggressive and arrogant,” he said.

“What they are is in trouble,” their “NFL Today” colleague Will McDonough added, noting that players were not allowed to receive noncontractual money from a team.

Finally, Chicago Coach Mike Ditka, who had a checkered history with Ryan, the Bears’ defensive coordinator when they won the Super Bowl in 1986, added a dollop of sarcasm during a satellite interview. “That would seem much too constructive for him to think of anything like that,” Ditka said of Ryan.

Set aside the humor, however, and there are many parallels between the Bounty Bowl and the current scandal which led to the suspensions of Gregg Williams, Sean Payton and other coaches and executives for the New Orleans Saints, punishments that were upheld this week after an appeal to Commissioner Roger Goodell.

In both instances, there were initial denials and dismissals by players that it was all “part of the game.” Some tried to make distinctions between “big-play bonuses” and bounties. There was even a tape: Zendejas claimed to have recorded a telephone conversation in which the Eagles’ special teams coach, Al Roberts, warned him of the bounty in the week leading up to the game.

The N.F.L. looked into the matter, though not as zealously as it pursued the Saints scandal.

“Calling it an investigation would be overstating it,” said the Hall of Fame sportswriter Ray Didinger, who covered the Eagles for The Philadelphia Daily News and now writes for CSNPhilly.com. “It was more of an inquiry.”

The N.F.L.’s security chief met with Ryan, Roberts and several Eagles players but found no evidence of wrongdoing.