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The word came on Friday afternoon – when all embarrassing news is pushed to be buried – that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell will recuse himself from hearing appeals in the New Orleans Saints bounty case. Former commissioner Paul Tagliabue will take over, meaning Goodell will no longer determine if his own previous decisions were proper.

The move was met with shock across the NFL, not because it was a bad idea, per se. No one's ever fully explained the logic of having the same guy be the sentencing and appellate judge, but then again, that was always the lesson here.

Goodell always did as Goodell wanted. He even convinced the union to agree to the process in the last collective bargaining agreement. He's the big, blond, (supposedly) benevolent dictator of the NFL, a man who might never have had a second thought in his life.

The surprise was that now someone will make one for him, a massive crack in Goodell's public image that extends a mess that's left the commissioner flailing about for steady ground.

Bringing in Tagliabue makes almost no sense for Goodell or the NFL.

It's not that Tagliabue isn't a fair-minded man. He is. A lawyer with a deep commitment to process and restraint, he ran the league from 1989-2006 in a closer partnership with the NFLPA than Goodell, his former general counsel and eventual successor, currently does. Where Goodell has cracked down on just about all off-field player trouble, Tags once refused to suspend Ray Lewis after he pled guilty to obstruction of justice in a murder.

[Related: Roger Goodell appoints Paul Tagliabue to hear Saints appeals]

It was the court's, not the NFL's, jurisdiction, Tagliabue argued, and that was a fair enough explanation.

So the union likes its chances with the old boss rather than the new boss. But where's the upside for Goodell?

If Tagliabue reverses (or even just reduces) Goodell's decision to suspend four Saints players for participating in a bounty scandal, then it looks like the league needed to bring back its old, wise leader to clean up the mess of the young brash one. No one, in any profession, wants the guy who held the job prior to be involved in public second-guessing/rebuking.

Then again, if Tagliabue just upholds Goodell's judgment, the decision will be seen as an inside job, the old boss covering for the new one, NFL owners creating the illusion of real jurisprudence that the public – and players – will reject. Fair or not, Tagliabue will struggle to be seen as fair if he sides with the man he groomed to replace him.

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