Keep letting BB & Brady get away w. the cheating & I promise they'll just keep on winning. The answer is right in front of our faces but the league & fans continue to let this go on b/c everyone wants to think better of the supposed "flagship" franchise. Why does a repeat offender who destroyed federal evidence & insulted the entire league get the benefit of the doubt? We've all read the publications since 08...we've heard what former opponents had to say, former players like Ted Johnson...a well respected federal investigator...why are we so afraid to call it out? Are we really that naive? Are we really that afraid of Patriot legal heads & fans downplaying it? Once its established that they have no moral fiber...SURPRISE! They don't...why do we give them any credibility? Of course they're gonna downplay it..and mock it...and posture..b/c clearly their priority is winning at any cost regardless of the collateral damage. It's all right there in front of us. Plenty of evidence..plenty of damage done...so I ask again...why are we so afraid to discuss this or give it credence?
This is amazing on so many levels of biased homerism, but the best is highlighted. Simply the best, bro.
Yep...it sure is...that your team gets away w. the nonsense they do..and the absolutely pathetic way you laugh off anyone's contentions as being ridiculous. It's all for that hardware right buddy? Gotta bring home those rings to rub in everyone's face.But I'M the homer? Your snide ass shouldnt even be allowed to post here My team's ability to win is being compromised by a downright blatant undercurrent of rule breaking,espionage & school yard worthy cheating. Your team had their chance at neutral due process & did nothing but act bombastic in the media, destroy federal evidence & threatened the brink of contempt of court..and that includes the fans just like YOU..why in the world would i be anything BUT a "homer"? You do not deserve the benefit of the doubt from the general public much less a rival team's message board.
Homerism is blind devotion to your team, not criticism of another team. OTOH your post is a perfect example of homerism.
The cell phone was was not only a key piece of evidence..it had specifically been requested back by Well's team & Brady destroyed & discarded of it knowing full well of its importance. That is by definition destruction of evidence...and maybe you are oblivious to how legal due process works..but that's as close to contempt of court as you can get.The very burden of proof of a civil proceeding...which the whole hearing/investigation was...is "Preponderance of evidence"...well Shady Brady & Kraft dinner decided they'd just destroy the evidence all together.. I'm not sure what there is to dispute about this or why you find this even debatable. What was that word again...HOMERISM?!
They kept their picks. They made trades to get more picks. It brings up question. How do you know who is going to be elite or top tier talent? You know in hindsight who it is. The simple fact is the draft is a crapshoot.
I submit that, while the salary cap may intend to all teams on equal revenue and expense footing, it penalizes fans of the game by locking-in mediocrity. You hit the key point. But there's also a huge amount of luck involved. Would Tom Brady have made it to the sixth round if teams knew his potential? Russell Wilson was too small and fell to the third round. Sensible? The jury is still out on Dak Prescott, but would he have made it to the fourth round if teams could foresee what he would do in 2016? Or, maybe it's coaching that brings all the special out. Maybe Mark Sanchez could have been a top-tier quarterback in the NFL for a decade if he was groomed under a better system with a better coaching staff? I don't know the answers to all these questions, but what the history of the Superbowl has shown - both pre-cap and post-cap - is that the quarterback position is the single-most critical component to a championship team. It's possible for a team with a "serviceable" quarterback to get by, coupled with a dynamic defense. Still, the vast majority of Superbowl champions also have Hall of Fame quarterbacks. There's more to team-building, for sure. My point isn't about the value of the position as much as it's about how the cap protects the wealth of owners and penalizes fans. You draft a quarterback with all the tools, and given the value of that single position and the portion of cap space it consumes, teams are necessarily locked into a mediocre quarterback for 4-5 years. At the same time, teams with top-tier quarterbacks get to build on a good player and compete into the playoffs. Owners share revenue, so losing doesn't sting so much to their wallets. Owners and the NFL team up to bully cities to help build stadiums and provide the infrastructure and support for them. Once billionaires make it into the Billionaires Club of NFL Owners, the only sure thing is that their billions are secure. Little to no risk for poor management of their expensive hobby. It's a true moral hazard. I wonder what would happen if consequences were added into the mix. Maybe an owner of a team that doesn't make the playoffs for a ten-year stretch has to put his club up for sale at an appraised price and share profit off the sale. Or whatever. Some sort of disincentive for mediocrity. The cap depresses the market for players and gives owners an excuse for fielding lousy teams without consequence. It's a broken system and sucks the fucking life out of fans. Consider how the world of fantasy football is a reflection of all this. NFL fans have to supplement their teams' on-field losing with their own fantasy teams just to regain some control and enjoyment out of the NFL experience. Where you can pick and choose the best players and aren't stuck with the same sucky team year after year. The really galling part of that is that how the NFL owners ultimately benefit. They win again.
I won't argue w. that..the Jets are their own worst enemy...but that still doesn't eradicate the Patriots wrongdoing or make things any easier given they are in our division
Ok, so who was the last billionaire owner of any sports franchise who went bankrupt based on how they managed that franchise? The Wilpons even managed to stay afloat through Bernie Madoff with the Bonilla contract pointing at them like a glowing red arrow. Secondly, what billionaire ever went bankrupt because his stable of polo ponies (pronounced pahlahpunnies courtesy of Art Carney/Ed Norton) dragged him down? Bad management in the NFL is why teams suck over time. The cap doesn't change that for better or worse. Locking in bad choices is still a result of bad choices with no expectation that better ones are on the horizon.
Pittsburgh Penguins declared bankruptcy and Mario Lemieux ended up owning the team. They came out better on the other side. It was also used as a rally cry by ownership in the next contract negotiation. After a lock-out - *surprise* - the NHL had shiny new salary cap. Not the point, though. OF COURSE no owners are going bankrupt from their expensive hobbies. Their partnerships have zero interest in the failure of ANY single owner because all they share revenue. Some leagues more than others. The point is: in the NFL, there's no great financial incentive for winning, nor is there any great disincentive for losing or mismanagement. And the salary rules dictate that no single owner has leverage in the market. Why? They're all billionaires and they get to determine their own minimum financial criteria for club membership in a market they monopolize. Yes, bad management is the reason teams suck year after year. Because there are no financial consequences for that. Empty stadiums? Sure, that hurts. But revenues still get shared, expenses are still capped and stadiums are still subsidized. Everything is set up to help the Billionaire's Club protect their billions. And, frankly, knowing your politics, I'm shocked you'd stand on the side of the billionaires here.
I don't believe the Penguins were owned by billionaires. Might be wrong on that but Howard Baldwin and Morris Belzberg were wealthy but I don't think they were in the wealth bracket that most NFL owners are in. The few NFL owners who were definitely not in that wealth bracket when they gained control of the team included Robert Kraft and of course the Steeler's ownership team which have controlled the franchise since the 1930's. These are also among the most successful owners, on the former hand because Kraft was just a great businessman - engineering a purchase of the Patriots without the background that would normally have gotten approval because he owned the land under the stadium, and on the latter because if any family anywhere knows how to run a football team it is the Rooneys - having done that continuously for 80-odd years at this point.
You're absolutely right. Great example! Robert Kraft was not a billionaire when he bought the Patriots. There also wasn't a cap when he bought the Patriots. He owned a crappy stadium in a crappy market, with a fanciable lease that allowed him to leverage his way into the Club. A few years later the NFL installs a salary cap - lo and behold, Robert Kraft is a billionaire. Moreso, I suspect, because of how he pretty astutely uses his NFL team as a platform for his paper goods and real estate holdings, but the cap played a nice assist in minimizing his risk. But look at the history of the pre-Kraft Patriots. The idiot Sullivan family loses the stadium and goes deep into debt betting on Michael Jackson for revenue; in-part because they were being squeezed by Kraft even back then. Kraft and his partner buy the stadium. Victor Kiam buys the teams for dimes on the dollar. Brings chaos and losing. He's squeezed by Kraft, locked into a crappy lease and forced to sell. James Orthwein steps in and has the money to eat the lease and move the team if he wanted, but asks for what was at the time an astronomical price for the team and Kraft, who owns the stadium, is able to finance it. Leveraged to the hilt. A few years later, a salary cap helps to fix costs. A few years later still, a new stadium, that he builds and owns, boosts revenue. A few years more and he develops all of the acreage around his stadium into a retail center - with state-assisted improvements to three major accessways, drawing from both the Massachusetts and Rhode Island markets. All admirable business and all good management. But what he didn't have is the same risk of failure that put the Sullivans and Victor Kiam into the poorhouse. The issue for today is the salary cap. Among other things, all it does is insulate bad owners with bad managers and help them protect their wealth. The notion that it promotes "parity" or levels the competitive playing field is a myth. A team with good owners and good managers like the Rooneys? They don't need protection.
Those are some very interesting points right there. Certainly not probable but suppose there was a way of splitting league revenues by on field success, like with true impact, I would be interested in seeing how team owners reacted to that.
Ralph Wilson Jr. Longtime Bills owner I think qualifies as well though. He wasn't in the wealth category of current owners and he was a terrible owner for decades.. you also have the Bears (halas family) and Bengals (Brown family) who have made their fortune solely through football.. bengals being one of the cheapest, most poorly run orgs in sports
The Bills were a good team from 1988 to 1999. That corresponds roughly to the era in which they had a true franchise QB in Jim Kelly. They were good some of the time under Lou Saban and a few years under Chuck Knox after he left the Rams. The Bills always had economic issues until the shared revenue became most of the pot for most teams. That wasn't until about the time that TV sports finally became big business in the 80's with the launch of the full time sports networks and the competition that they brought to the contract holders of the time. The Bills were bad at other times for various reasons and recently at least partly because Wilson got old. It happens. The Raiders were a very good team under Al Davis for decades but when he got old he got old and things deteriorated. The Bills, BTW, represented their league/conference in the final championship game 6 times in 54 years under Ralph Wilson. That's no shabby accomplishment. That he kept the team in Buffalo when he could have made much more money selling it or moving it is a testament to his staying power as a civic cornerstone and he wasn't even from Buffalo - he was from Detroit and lived there most of the year. The Bengals were a good team under Paul Brown and they've been mostly a bad team under his son. That happens also. The Steelers blew chunks when a particular generation was in charge and then became quite good, the best in fact, when the next generation took over. That's what having multiple generations of owners in the same family will do for you. To a lesser extent the Giants have been the same deal.
The cap was instituted the same year Kraft bought the Patriots in 1994. His purchase of the team was more than a decade long pursuit and he very successfully cornered two ownership groups and the NFL to finally get the team. The cap certainly hasn't hurt him since then but there's no reason to believe he wasn't going to do very well based on the instincts and balls that got him the team in the first place. He squeezed the Pats very successfully over the late 80's and early 90's and stymied potential moves by the team on a couple of occasions. Both ownership groups before him (after the Sullivans had to sell) were very interested in turning the team over in the most profitable way and they still wound up selling to the guy from Brookline who was going to keep the team in Massachusetts.
Are you arguing my point, or yours? You fairly well boiled down and summarized what I wrote. Once again, the point is how the salary cap is one of the way NFL ownership insulates wealth and removes. No one before Kraft had that same benefit. We'll never know, but if James Busch Orthwein never sold to Bob Kraft, when the Foxboro lease expired, Kraft-the-landlord may very well have been battling Victor Kiam for gub'mint cheese.
More good examples. Funny. Jerry Jones used to talk about how would constantly tease Mike Brown at league meetings about leaving money on the table, all because Brown wanted to keep the stadium named after his father.
