Quote:What i mean is, why didn't this come out when the whole deflate gate thing happened? Why wait until its a few days before the season starts?
Because it will get infinitely more attention dropped days before the season opener than it would have if dropped in July or August.
Quote:Didn't Vic used to say the Jaguars' headsets always seemed to have some kind of malfunction at Gillette Stadium but almost never anywhere else?
Yes. The malfunctioning headsets in Foxboro and mysterious crowd noise in Indy were his two most common responses when asked about teams cheating.
Quote:I think in years to come it will be revealed that practices like this are common place in the NFL.It would be naive think of the patriots as the only team to try get a competitive advantage in this manner, in fact I would say multiple teams try stunts like this.
There's an old saying: "If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying." It would be naive to assume that most, if not all teams use dubious means to gain a competitive advantage when and where they can, but it seems from the article (and from many other articles in the past) like the Patriots are far more brazen and aggressive about it than other teams are? The Falcons were found to have been pumping crowd noise in, but you didn't see any articles after that, a point at which the Falcons were vulnerable to such articles, implicated them in further cheating scandals. Why was that?
Quote:Make no mistake, this piece is a condemnation of the league. Not just the Patriots.
It's a pattern, a league culture that has allowed it and attempted to "make it go away" whenever possible scandals have come to light.
The more all the things the NFL has tried to keep under wraps comes out, the better IMO.
Kraft warned he would air dirty laundry if Brady was punished, but backed off that threat.
Looks like ESPN is digging up their own.
In the end, it can result in good, if it leads to positive change. And IMO, that will overshadow any negative hits they may take during the process.
Well said.
I think Goodell's poor handling of controversies will ultimately be his undoing as Commissioner. The first Patriots scandal got him in hot water, the collusion scandal involving Washington and the Cowboys got him in serious trouble, the domestic violence outbreak and his ham-handed handling of it nearly cost him his job last year, and now the second Patriots scandal has owners infuriated again. Compounding the problem for Goodell is that his "independent investigators" are obvious league shills who are paid to come to the conclusions he wants them to, and whenever his punishments are taken to a true independent arbitrator or a courtroom, they always seem to end up either significantly reduced or tossed entirely because of factors completely within Goodell's control. At some point, the cat runs out of lives, and Goodell's on his seventh or eighth life at this point.
Ultimately, money talks, and as long as the NFL is raking in cash hand over foot, Goodell is reasonably safe. If league popularity, attendance or profit starts to fall off, or if players exploit a legal loophole to end the labor "peace" that currently exists (and they'd have ammo in an argument given that Goodell consistently ignores the CBA), I'd expect that Goodell and his entire senior team would be shown the door, and a relative outsider to be hired on in his place. Of course, if Goodell continues embarrassing the league in the courts of law and public opinion, guys like Jerry Jones and Paul Allen who wield a great deal of influence within that owners' room might just rally support to push him out and install someone new before any decline or labor battle happens.
