Definitely different in severity and from the viewpoint of the law, but both have the potential to hurt the business. No question one should carry a more severe punishment.
There’s a ton of rules and policies out there in all forms of business that state “or giving the appearance of” some sort of wrongdoing or unethical behavior. As an employee you don’t have to be proven to be guilty of a crime to be punished or to lose your job. If it’s proven you’ve violated written company policy(which pretty much everyone signs to) you face the consequences.
And I agree with this... to an extent. The overall issue, of course, is that I seriously doubt anywhere in a players contract or CBA agreement does it say "thou shall not get hummers from Craigslist masseuses". I seriously doubt that's clearly defined as an infraction in the company policy.
The knock on the NFL is that their "personal conduct policy" has always been written in such a wide and vague way that basically its an arbitrary decision for the NFL to decide what is detrimental and what isn't. Some would say that's totally fair, but others would say that you've basically create a Corporate loophole to punish, fine, suspend or fire anybody who does something you don't like.
Now, ultimately, I side with the employer in these specific cases, mostly because this was all collectively bargained, and the employees, as a group, agreed to this being the process. So if they were that unhappy with the process, CBA negotiations is the time to adjust.
And as I pointed out during the last CBA discussions... these policies tend to only impact like 1% of the overall employee/player pool, since most players will never be subject to the personal conduct policy to begin with. So thinking they should hold out or bargain for policies that generally impact very few is a waste of time and money.
