Don't let little details get in the way of the witch hunt! Just grab your torch an pitch fork and lets go! People are choosing to see only the parts of this story they wish to see. Everyone assumes that Walsh will use the immunity he receives to tell nothing but the truth. Well, if he gets full immunity like he wants, he could then lie and say whatever he wants without any evidence and not be liable for slander or defamation. THAT is the key point that is taking this so long to be worked out, because the NFL wants to hear what he has to say but not if its a bunch of crap and lies so that he can make himself popular. Believe me, I'm looking forward to it because its about time this stank story is over and done with so that everyone can move on to football. Its become a soap opera and not a sport anymore and its sickening. The Patriots were already punished for doing things that have been said by many were "common place" in the league, so lets move on, it was an unprecedented and historic punishment as well. By the way, there was film of the Patriots walk through practice in their hotel from that Super Bowl as well as the Panthers and Eagles Super Bowl's. It was shown on the Three Games to Glory DVD sets, so I'd imagine tapes of the Rams walk through exists, whether they were filmed by a member of the Patriots staff by order of Belichick is a completely different game altogether. Even if its true that they did in fact film the Ram's walk through, which to this point is just an accusation with ZERO evidence to back it up, the punishment would not be another first round because it falls under the same category of illegally filming that their first punishment was for. As long as the Patriots didn't lie to Goodell and keep those tapes for themselves and not turn them over, chances are he wouldn't pose further fines on them and if he did, they would be small, which when added to the overall sum of their fines would still be substantial. I find it mind numbing that people feel a 1st round draft pick for a penalty is some sort of "slap on the wrist," and find it even more bizarre when people call for additional 1st round picks as punishment for accusations which could turn into just more of the same evidence thats already been turned over to Goodell by the Patriots. You can't strip a team of multiple 1st round picks and expect them to remain competitive over a period of time. This is a BUSINESS and taking multiple first rounders from a team would cripple their future and thus hurt the business as a whole. One pick is bad enough, that is a potential pro-bowl/all-pro caliber player that is gone from the Patriot's roster for the next 6+ years. Any more then that is complete overkill, thats like sentencing a guy to death by hanging, then cutting the rope after hes dead and pissing on his face. Obviously as rivals, you'd be completely fine with them losing every draft pick until 2050, their salary cap cut in half forever and half their team revenue taken every year indefinitely and given to the Jets. Even then, you still wouldn't completely be satisfied.
The proposed indemnification that Walsh's lawyer released on February 15 stated that the league would indemnify him "absent bad faith on the part of Mr. Walsh". That is most definitely conditional on his testimony, since lying would certainly constitute bad faith. What his lawyer claims is the issue is that without such a guarantee, the league could accuse him of lying without any proof and drag him into court, knowing that he would be wiped out whether the suit had any merit or not; language like this would put the burden of proof on the league to demonstrate bad faith before the suit could even begin. The real point that the Jets fans here are making is that Walsh being scummy has nothing to do with the merits of the case, and no one (including Pats fans) has the slightest idea what is actually the truth, so the smug condescension flowing from New England is idiotic.
Does anyone else other than me get the impression that the NFL would like nothing more than to drag this out past the draft so there is no chance that NE loses that #7 pick?
Are you seriously denying that the Commish has been trying to sweep this whole thing under the rug ever since the story broke months ago? Feel free to put your answer in 42 pt. font. TBTF
This is of course is bad for the NFL. Especially since there is so much wink-wink nod-nod illegal gambling involved. They would like nothing more than to sweep it under the rug. The problem is that a lot of what we are hearing now even before Walsh testifies the NFL is now saying they already knew about. Like taping in 2000-2002. The problem is they never let that out ot the public until now. It seems they are trying to minimize Walsh's testimony even before he gives it. The real problem is (and sooner or later the media will pick up on this) that the NFL are guilty of a conspiracy to bury the facts. I can't see how Goodell or any of the upper echelon of the NFL survive this once that happens. You can bet Tagliabue would have handled this much better. He had nothing to lose and was all about integrity.
No, he clearly has been trying to sweep it under the rug but that in itself means nothing. Whether this was or was widespread, either way the NFL would be trying to downplay it so I don't see how why it's significant.
This is pretty damn funny.... most of the cheating is alleged to have occurred under Tags reign as commish. I wonder how much he knew. Integrity? Are you kidding me? At least the one good thing about Goodell was his policies in policing the NFL. Unfortunately he's looking like quite the hypocrite now with the spygate garbage.
What? The integrity of the game isn't significant? The NFL's problem here is that it is behaving like a company trying to protect its stock price in the face of a scandal rather than like an organization that oversees one of our national pastimes. Goodell should follow the lead of Giamatti and how he handled the Pete Rose gambling scandal. After a spineless Uberroth used the now familiar "nothing to see here folks, move along," method, Giamatti hired an investigator and produced a report on Rose, to protect the game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowd_Report He then shitcanned Rose. Can't you see that the idea that the best team in football "cheated" to win Super Bowls is just as corrosive as the Rose allegations? TBTF
This is a terrific post, and not only because I met Bart Giamatti, and think the world lost a great human being when he died.
You didn't read what I said at all. In your first post you you titled it "the coverup laid bare" and then wrote in huge font about the NFL trying to downplay this, which to me would imply that because the NFL is downplaying this, there must be something more to it. My point is that no matter how bad what the Pats were doing actually was, the NFL would still be trying to cover it up so the way Goodell has handled this isn't indicative either way of the truth. Everyone is assuming that just because the NFL has never made their investigation public that they didn't investigate it thoroughly.
Here's why I think its significant. The NFL admitted destroying evidence once. One does not destroy exculpatory evidence. So you have to assume the evidence paints the Pats very negatively, because the destroyed. evidence no longer exists to contradict that presumption. Ask your lawyer what "spoliation" means. Of course, Goodell's position was similar to yours: move along now folk, nothing to see here, time to move on. . . . Now that the possibility of additional evidence has arisen, the fact that he's downplaying it before we know what it is is very suspicious to me.
Thats where the problem lies. On either side of it, almost everyone agrees that Goodell has handled the situation terribly. His destroying the evidence opened things up for this type of endless debate. However, I don't understand how much would really be gained by the NFL by making all of the evidence public. IIRC, a few days after the story broke the tapes of the Jets sidelines started circulating, and Goodell might have destroyed everything to stop annoying leaks like that and out and end to it.
You may be right. Appearances here may be worse than the actual crime. There may be nothing more to this than what Goodell said publicly already, and whether or not there is a bigger scandal, Goodell would be trying to minimize things. But it's already clear that Goodell was less than forthcoming with the public. One example, Specter got Goodell to concede that Belly has been taping since 2000. That was "covered up," as far as I'm concerned. Read: WASHINGTON (AP) — Bill Belichick has been illegally taping opponents' defensive signals since he became the New England Patriots' coach in 2000, according to Sen. Arlen Specter, who said NFL commissioner Roger Goodell told him that during a meeting Wednesday. . . . "There were a great many questions answered by Commissioner Goodell," Specter, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told reporters after the meeting. "I found a lot of questions unanswerable because of the tapes and notes had been destroyed." . . . Specter, from Pennsylvania, wants to talk to other league officials about what exactly was taped and which games may have been compromised. "We have a right to have honest football games," he said. . . . Still, Specter wants to know why penalties were imposed on Belichick before the full extent of the wrongdoing was known and the tapes destroyed in a two-week span. Asked if he thinks there was a coverup, Specter demurred. "There was an enormous amount of haste," Specter said. He scoffed at the reasons Goodell gave for destroying the tapes and notes, particularly about trying to keep them out of competitors' hands and because Belichick had admitted to the taping. "What's that got to do with it? There's an admission of guilt, you preserve the evidence," Specter said. As for keeping the tapes out of the hands of others: "All you have to do is lock up the tapes." Specter has questioned the quality of the NFL's investigation into the matter and raised the possibility of congressional hearings if he wasn't satisfied with Goodell's answers. Specter also raised the threat of Congress canceling the league's antitrust exemption and reiterated that in the meeting with Goodell. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j9pfCVi7MZaIaiOa9GuXY20jXKKwD8UPPRDO0 TBTF
What? The fact it happened on his watch has nothing to do with whether or not he knew about it or how he would have handled it. He was at the end of his reign and beholding to no one. I'm not sure that's true of Goodell.
If the taping of signals had been widespread the NFL would be sighing in relief right now. They'd have slapped the Pats on the wrist and said "ok, from now on we're REALLY enforcing this, put your video cameras away." They'd probably have banned teams from using video cameras at all during games or unless their own team was on the practice field. The problem for the NFL is that this was NOT widespread, instead being restricted apparently to the team that won 3 superbowls in the 8 years they did it. That is what causes this to be such a headache for the NFL, just like the Cowboys and 49ers cap antics were in the early to mid 90's. That's what the problem is. In truth only the 49ers were so out of control that the NFL had to act decisively. I expect when all is said and done that the sooner the NFL recognizes that this won't go away and suspends Belichik for a season (or quietly negotiates his permanent retirement from the NFL) the better it will go for everybody including the Pats. Goodell's job probably hinges on this being handled expeditiously and not dragging on forever with new allegations every few months until it is resolved.
Goodell has been pretty explicit in saying that the punishment was based on the type of advantage the Pats were getting, but on the principal that they were ignoring the memos sent from the league. I know this has become a cliche heard way too often from people defending the Patriots, but stuff like the videotaping really does/did occur frequently around the NFL. Articles like this http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/don_banks/07/06/cheating.nfl/index.html, and quotes like this from Jimmy Johnson: "Eighteen years ago a scout for the Chiefs told me what they did, and he said what you need to do is just take your camera and you go and zoom in on the signal caller and that way you can sync it up. The problem is that if they’re not on the press box side you can’t do it from the press box, you have to do it from the sideline. This was 18 years ago." and this: "Oh yeah, I did it with video and so did a lot of other teams in the league. Just to make sure that you could study it and take your time, because you’re going to play the other team the second time around. But a lot of coaches did it, this was commonplace." -suggest that there is at the least, a group of coaches in the league that push the envelope in terms of spying. One could reasonably argue that what the Patriots did went ever further than what everyone else was doing, but that isn't the same as saying that the taping was "restricted" to them. I'm not saying that Patriots shouldn't have been punished, because clearly disobeying the league is unacceptable behavior, but if the videotaping really was a huge deal in terms of upsetting the balance of the game, and if it was only the Patriots who ever did it the NFL wouldn't have waited for the 5th time they caught them doing it to lay down the law.
The thing is that this isnt the Salem witch trials, if he testified some outlandish claims that he couldn't prove. Noone would believe him, but he IS claiming to have NEW evidence, that is what is such a big deal.
maybe im stupid but why in the hell would anyone set up anything if they didnt plan to use it? your telling me the pats paid some people to go to the superdome and set up video equipment and then not use it? doesn't make any sense to me.
1. Cutting BB loose is a pipe dream. This is what everyone here said about the ORIGINAL Spygate. 2. Allegations are just that...allegations. Of all these allegations, what has come of it? Absolutely nothing. Not ONE bit of evidence or fact since September. 3. Still waiting for something from Walsch. Where is it? Until then, it's all just talk and subjective wish listing.
