The word circulating around the NFL these days is that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has begun looking into the cases of Plaxico Burress and Michael Vick to determine if he will take any disciplinary action against them under the league's personal-conduct rules.

Let's see. In the first case, man sticks unregistered loaded gun in his pants and jumps in his car for a night on the town. Man drives to Manhattan nightclub, has a few cocktails. Gun goes off in his pants and shoots him in the leg. Man is taken to Manhattan hospital and enters under assumed name to get his leg taken care of.

Man is suspended for the rest of the season by his team, the New York Giants, and later released. Man insists they owe him money. Man allegedly turns down plea bargain and insists he's going to fight it out in court because he's innocent even though he's obviously guilty. Man is not very smart.

So exactly what is the good commissioner reviewing? Burress' IQ test?

Unless somewhere in the NFL's personal-conduct policy there's a loophole that says "guns are required accoutrements when out in public'' or "shooting yourself in public rather than someone else is considered a noble gesture,'' there wouldn't seem to be too much to review here.

Goodell once famously told a player who was trying to explain he was carrying a gun in a public place because he felt he needed protection, that maybe he should consider not going into places where he felt he needed a gun to be safe.

The question, it would seem, is not whether Burress will be suspended for squeezing off a few rounds into his own leg. The question is whether his suspension will run concurrent with a stretch in the state penitentiary, which is where New York law sends you if you fire off an unregistered weapon in public.

Vick's situation is different. He already has done his time. He's gone to federal prison. He's gone broke. He's gone to work at a construction site for $10 an hour. He's gone to work for the Boys and Girls Clubs near his hometown in Virginia. He's gone to bankruptcy court to try to work out his financial problems, which run deeper than any of his receivers while he was with the Falcons.

He's also been suspended from the NFL since his illegal dogfighting ring was discovered, so suspending him further would seem, frankly, to be cruel and inhumane punishment, as well as double jeopardy.

Of course, many folks would accuse Vick of the same thing, but, on that score, he's paid his debt to society and the NFL. If Vick sits out another season, it would be three years before he finally returned to pro football, and he would have little chance of rekindling his dynamic ways.

Frankly, that kind of additional punishment seems like piling on at this stage. Assuming Vick hasn't said or done anything that convinces Goodell he intends to go back into the dogfighting business, additional punishment would seem only a face-saving mission for a league angry that a player they tried to make one of the faces of the NFL let them down.

It would be about as fair as Burress firing a gun off in a public place and the NFL deciding that didn't violate its personal-conduct policy.

Ron Borges is a columnist for the Boston Herald.

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