Specter Says the Patriots Taped the Steelers Twice

[napgamer]

I am the only one or does it look like anyone connected with the NFL be it owner, commish or annoucer is circling the wagons and getting ready for a massive cover-up.  7 years of cheating and getting a serious game advantage leading to superbowl wins and the best you can do is fine the guy.  Pacman Jones does nothing to effect the game itself and he gets a 1 year suspension!   Bellicheat should never coach in the NFL again.  Just like the infamous tuck rule all of a sudden the rules change.  I guess it helps that Goodell and Kraft are buddies and the Rooney's just spout the company line.

[Preacherman0]

I hate to say it, but does this border on being racist? I understand the players that got suspended deserved it but the commish took away their livelihood for acts committed outside of the workplace (most of them anyhow)..

Yet, Belichek breaks the rules while at work and gets a slap on the wrist?? 500,000 is nothing to him and the 1st round pick doesn't feel good for the Pats.. but when they still have the #7 pick the lose of the #32 doesn't hurt them one bit..

That's really what bothers me about all of this.  I don't think you can truly say it's racist unless you know Roger Goodell and found a white hood hidden in the file drawer on the left side of his desk.  But, surely the NFL commissioner should realize that it's the APPEARANCE of impropriety as much as anything else.  Perception is the greatest form of reality.  And the perception is that he held players to a high standard, while a coach, a team, and an entire franchise have their transgressions quickly swept under the rug.  

If the punishment for Henry and Pacman was severe because of "multiple offenses," then how could the video tapes not count as "multiple offenses?"  A United States senator has publicly stated that the Patriots had video dating back to 2000.  If that's not "multiple offenses," I'd like to know what is.

and the punishment being given before everything was known is very suspicious.. After this ordeal my opinion of Goodell is going down.. and i mean plummetting.. and not necessarily b/c of the hatred i have for the Pats but b/c of how shady he seems to be about all of this..

If he is going to rule with an iron fist he needs to rule Players and Coaches all alike.. HARD!! Just like he gets it from Kraft on every other saturday night in a secluded cabin house..

Again, I don't necessarily think there is an intentional cover-up, on behalf of the Patriots.  But the APPEARANCE of impropriety is the problem here.  If there isn't a cover-up, it sure looks pretty bad that the league office dished out the punishment and destroyed the videos that the PATRIOTS "volunteered" to them in a span of about 4 days.

Personally, I think the cover-up is more about fear than about the Patriots.  I think the league is afraid that teams, gamblers, etc. will learn that the outcomes of games were/could be very easily influenced, if not outright manipulated.  As bad as this is, it would be even worse for the integrity of the league if some bookie came up and said, "Hey, I lost a lot of money on Super Bowl XXXVI, who's gonna pay me for that?"




 

[Finnegans Wake]

Goodell, like Rooney, wanted this to go away for the good of football.  But it is Goodell's job to make the hard decisions, and he needed to say something more definitive about the infractions.  He needed to come clean early, in detail, and make it clear that this has a greater negative impact than even steroid use.  Maybe not quite the Black Sox scandal here, but Goodell needed to channel him some Mountain Landis.  He swung and he missed, and he's going to catch heat for it.  Fucking thin-lipped bastard is right; he's goddamned Frank Burns.  And we all know Frank Burns eats worms.

Got no problem with being the guy with the big stick as regards players, but you have to wield the big stick commensurately across the board.  And the implied or inherent racism viz the players is that, well, a lot of NFLers are black.  Simple as that.  I don't think he intends to be racist, but he's disproportionately penalizing young black men over rich old white guys.  Sometimes racism just, y'know, happens.  Had he stuck the cattleprod up the collective asses of the Kraft/Belicheat fuckwads from day one, that aura of racism isn't there.

If this shit is going on since Belichek came to NE, and the NFL explicitly warned against taping in the owners meetings before the 2007 season, then the Patriots should have lost both first round picks.  Sorry, the trade pick is gone too.  They should have lost the second round pick.  And they should have lost the third round pick.  Robert Kraft should be fined $10M; Bill Belicheck should be fined $5M.  The Patriots should have $5M less cap room than every other team for the 2008-10 seasons.  Bill Belichick gets suspended 8 games, and will only be re-instated when he personally calls every coach and owner of every team in the league and says he's sorry.  But they get to keep their ill-gotten booty.

[Finnegans Wake]

Goodell, like Rooney, wanted this to go away for the good of football.  But it is Goodell's job to make the hard decisions, and he needed to say something more definitive about the infractions.  He needed to come clean early, in detail, and make it clear that this has a greater negative impact than even steroid use.  Maybe not quite the Black Sox scandal here, but Goodell needed to channel him some Mountain Landis.  He swung and he missed, and he's going to catch heat for it.  Fucking thin-lipped bastard is right; he's goddamned Frank Burns.  And we all know Frank Burns eats worms.

Got no problem with being the guy with the big stick as regards players, but you have to wield the big stick commensurately across the board.  And the implied or inherent racism viz the players is that, well, a lot of NFLers are black.  Simple as that.  I don't think he intends to be racist, but he's disproportionately penalizing young black men over rich old white guys.  Sometimes racism just, y'know, happens.  Had he stuck the cattleprod up the collective asses of the Kraft/Belicheat fuckwads from day one, that aura of racism isn't there.

If this shit is going on since Belichek came to NE, and the NFL explicitly warned against taping in the owners meetings before the 2007 season, then the Patriots should have lost both first round picks.  Sorry, the trade pick is gone too.  They should have lost the second round pick.  And they should have lost the third round pick.  Robert Kraft should be fined $10M; Bill Belicheck should be fined $5M.  The Patriots should have $5M less cap room than every other team for the 2008-10 seasons.  Bill Belichick gets suspended 8 games, and will only be re-instated when he personally calls every coach and owner of every team in the league and says he's sorry.  But they get to keep their ill-gotten booty.