Regardless of whether or not NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell promised to provide financial help to the man paralyzed in a February 2007 strip-club shooting allegedly instigated by Titans cornerback Pacman Jones, the reality is the the league has no legal or moral obligation to Tommy Urbanski or his family.

Still, Urbanski’s wife  claims that Goodell offered to help with the family’s medical bills.  “Roger Goodell told me, ‘You don’t have to call us.  We’ll get in touch with you,’” Kathy Urbanski told the New York Daily News.  “Now I realize he meant, ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’

“This is a David-and-Goliath situation, with working people against a very greedy and evil corporation called the NFL,” she said.

Hang on a second, Mrs. Urbanski.  The last time we checked, your family sued the NFL under a frivolous (in our opinion) theory that the league was in some way liable for the off-duty, off-season criminal conduct of one of its players.  And that makes no sense at all.

And though the Daily News article includes a quote from Goodell (”I’m sorry about the tragedy the family is going through, but I don’t feel we have any responsibility”), the item is shamefully slanted against the NFL.

Indeed, the league has no responsibility to Urbanski.  None.  Zero.  The season was over.  Jones was on his own time.  He allegedly engaged in criminal conduct. 

Plenty of men who commit crimes also have jobs.  Are their employers automatically responsible to the victims?

In some instances an employer can be responsible for criminal conduct of its employees.  If, for example, the Titans were playing a game in Nevada and if the Titans had failed to enforce their curfew rules against Jones and if the Titans knew or should have known that Jones had a habit of breaking curfew by sneaking out of the hotel and raising hell at strip clubs, the team might bear some of the blame.  Absent facts like that, the NFL is no different than any other company with an employee who commits a crime during his free time.

Besides, the NFL’s deep pocket isn’t needed; Jones has the money (now or in the future) to pay.  The notion that there’s a pile of medical bills on the Urbanski’s coffee table is a red herring; health-care providers routinely cool their jets while patients without sufficient means to pay the amounts due and owing pursue justice from the persons who caused the harm. 

Of course, the Daily News doesn’t bother to address such basic facts.  Maybe the person who wrote the story simply doesn’t understand the way that these things work, and maybe the person who wrote the story didn’t bother to try to find out. 

Why should he?  At a time when the league is facing a growing number of thorny P.R. problems, it’s too easy to clumsily throw another log in the general direction of the fire.