Falcons president Rich McKay is set to meet with NFL commissioner Rich Goodell and other league officials about being reinstated to the league’s powerful competition committee, owner Arthur Blank said on Sunday.
McKay was suspended from the NFL competition committee as part of the team’s penalty for pumping fake noise into the Georgia Dome during the 2013 and 2014 seasons.
He was suspended effective April 1 and was eligible to apply for reinstatement after June 30.
“We’ve had some discussions with the league,” Blank said on Sunday. “Rich is scheduled to go up there in a few weeks and meet with the commissioner and others. Rich certainly has my support. He was a very valued member of the committee for 22 years and was mentioned last night by Bill Polian, who was an inductee into the Hall of Fame, as somebody who was important that he worked with for a number of years.”
The Falcons expect that he will be reinstated.
“I’m very optimistic that something will be worked out with Rich,” Blank said.
The NFL fined the Falcons $350,000 and took away its fifth-round pick in the 2016 as part of the punishment.
“We’ve dealt with an unfortunate set of circumstances,” Blank said. “One of which we probably could have avoided. Hence the penalty and hence we didn’t appeal it.”
NFL rules state that “at no point during the game can artificial crowd noise or amplified crowd noise be played in the stadium.”
McKay, an attorney, had been a longstanding member of the committee since 1998 and served as the chairman.
The NFL concluded McKay was unaware of the artificial crowd noise but “bared some responsibility for ensuring that team employees comply with league rules.”
A league investigation found that Roddy White, the former director of event marketing was directly responsible for the noise. The NFL said White would have been suspended for eight games without pay had he still been a member of the Falcons.
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