President Barack Obama on Monday granted clemency to 46 people serving long prison terms for non-violent drug offenses and did not, in a sweeping expansion of executive power, commute the sentences of the fourteen professional football players suspended for violation of the league’s substance abuse policy in calendar year 2015.

“As a lawyer myself, and a public servant sworn to uphold our founding documents, I have enormous respect for the law of the land,” Obama did not say. “But to sentence someone to decades in prison for a non-violent crime born of cycles of addiction and despair seems to me incongruous with the American values of justice and mercy.

“And after rigorous analysis, and consultation with experts in many fields, I also reached the conclusion that NFL’s substance abuse policy is simply bullshit.

“Now, now,” Obama did not say to an aghast press corps, several members of which were trying to revive Sports Illustrated reporter and noted milquetoast Peter King from a swooning spell, “hear me out. I know there are issues of jurisdiction here – the NFL is not a federal government entity, legally I have no power over it, and so on. This is all technically correct. But, Jesus Christ, people, just look at this shit.

“Look, to the extent that we’re talking about weed and alcohol, those are either completely legal or legal to a degree in most states, and are broadly socially accepted in all of them; the notion that a man should be forbidden to ply his trade simply for indulging in either is ludicrous to the point of indefensibility. If they affect his performance, that is clearly a team matter.

“Now,” Obama did not continue, his voicing rising over a high-pitched whine, almost a whistle, emanating from trembling Pro Football Talk founder Mike Florio, “if a player commits a crime as the result of either – or indeed by possession or use of unambiguously illegal drugs – there is another system by which they can be punished: the goddamn judicial system. It’s not perfect, as the men and women to whom I have granted clemency can attest, but it is at least administered, in theory, by alert adults capable of mature judgment,  a category that certainly does include the grisly likes of Ted Fucking Cottrell. I didn’t think it was possible for anyone to be worse at anything than he was at being the Minnesota Vikings’ defensive coordinator, and yet there he is. It doesn’t bear thinking about. And it’s not just him.

“Have you read any of this garbage?” Obama did not ask, waving around a sheaf of papers bearing the NFL logo. “If you didn’t know better, you’d say it was the work of children, and your heart would break as you thought about the kind of monstrously malformed, permanently stunted juveniles for whom the phrase ‘let’s play football’ conveys ‘let’s scrawl a bunch of rules on cardboard with crayon and then arbitrarily punish each other with no possibility of recourse’. It’s troubling. These are the sorts of children who grow into teenagers who take briefcases to school.

“Seriously, this Roger Goodell dude…Jesus Christ,” Obama did not go on to say over the sound of dozens of accredited sports reporters sobbing in rage. “He’s all over the place – I can never tell if he’s going to suspend someone for a quarter of the season, for their entire lives, or if he’s just going to sit there and crap his pants. ”

The proceedings were then briefly interrupted as King sat bolt upright with a piercing shriek and ran from the room, muttering “Cam Newton Cam Newton Cam Newton” for reasons that remain obscure, and disappeared into the night.

“The main thrust is this,” Obama did not continue. “Left to their own devices, the NFL’s leadership – to torture that word effectively beyond recognition – clearly thinks that smoking weed is worse than domestic violence. They’ve made some changes to rectify that, but that was the result of public outcry, in the absence of which Ray Rice would have played fourteen games last year and Josh Gordon would still be suspended for the entirety of 2015.

“Faced with such intellectual dishonesty and moral imbecility, I had no choice but to commute the sentences of every NFL player suspended under these rules in 2015,” Obama did not say, before an aide showed him a phone presumably displaying a picture, and whispered into his ear. “What the fuck is that? What’s a LaRon Landry – holy fuck that’s a…a person. My god. No, that guy can stay suspended. Jesus fuck. Wow.

“I’m not going to speculate on how this sorry state of affairs came about,” a visibly shaken Obama did not conclude, recovering. “Let’s just say it seems to me that some motherfuckers have an interest in regulating the recreational activities of a certain type of young athlete that I would not say is altogether healthy. You know who you are. So do I. And I have my eye on you.

“This isn’t over,” Obama did not then say to the assembly, a small portion of whom appeared to be on the verge of applause and the rest of whom were gimlet-eyed and speechless with impotent rage. “Believe that.”