Interesting read..... Thoughts opinions, insights? N.F.L.?s Handling of Patriots? Tapes Is Beginning to Raise Questions Suzy Allman for The New York Times Bill Belichick and the Patriots were punished when an employee filmed Jets defensive signals Sept. 9. Article Tools Sponsored By By GREG BISHOP Published: December 16, 2007 The N.F.L. reacted swiftly when the Spygate mess surfaced in September. Commissioner Roger Goodell promised on national television that there would be a full investigation of the New England Patriots? covert filming of Jets defensive signals. He ordered the Patriots to send any videotapes filmed in violation of N.F.L. rules to the league office. Bill Belichick, left, and Jets Coach Eric Mangini on Sept. 9. The N.F.L. said its punishment was not based only on that game. The tapes arrived sometime between Sept. 16, when Goodell said he had yet to receive them, and Sept. 20, when the N.F.L. announced all material from the investigation had been destroyed ?to ensure a level playing field.? The league has not addressed the tapes since. Two crisis-management experts used the same word ? fishy ? to describe the league?s handling of the situation, saying the destruction of the tapes raised questions about what they contained. ?The strategy is profoundly bad,? said Al Tortorella, the managing director of crisis management for Los Angeles-based Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide. ?I don?t know why they would destroy the tapes. That?s astounding. There?s no criminality here, but it sure doesn?t pass the smell test.? The Patriots? videotaping practices became a league issue during the season opener for the teams at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., when Jets security personnel caught a Patriots employee filming the Jets? defensive signals from the sideline. Goodell handed down the most-severe penalty in N.F.L. history ? the loss of a first-round draft pick; a $250,000 fine for the Patriots, which funnels into the league?s general expenses fund; and a $500,000 fine for Coach Bill Belichick, which goes to N.F.L. Charities for medical research and youth fitness programs. The N.F.L. later clarified that the penalty was for the Patriots ?totality of conduct? and not only for their actions against the Jets. The league never explained what totality of conduct meant. Presumably, the evidence was on the tapes. Questions remain: How many tapes showed evidence of cheating? In what games? In the playoffs? In the Super Bowl? By other teams? The Jets (3-10) and the Patriots (13-0), who will meet Sunday in Foxborough, Mass., declined to comment last week, referring to the matter as a ?league issue.? The N.F.L. spokesman Greg Aiello wrote in an e-mail message, ?We?ve addressed this matter, and we?re not going to readdress it this week.? Greg Wilson, a crisis counselor and senior vice president at Levick Strategic Communications in Washington, said: ?They?re rolling the dice that the whole thing is just going to go away. And here?s the thing ? a lot of this could be avoided.? Wilson sees a crisis that requires managing, a ?clear-cut case of all the parties needing to rip off the Band-Aid as soon as possible.? The goal of managing any crisis, he said, is to acknowledge the black eye and compress the time it lasts. Wilson says the American public generally wants to hear what he calls the Big Three of crisis management: I am sorry. I take responsibility. And I will fix it. He recommended that the league respond with more transparency, explaining in detail what the tapes contained and why they were destroyed. ?When you destroy evidence, most people assume guilt,? Wilson said. ?The N.F.L. is cashing in on its trust bank. They can weather the storm, but they are stringing it out longer than most companies or people can afford to.? Tortorella points to the N.B.A. in comparison. When the referee scandal surfaced earlier this year, Commissioner David Stern went on national television and gave a sincere-sounding apology. In these different reactions, Tortorella said the N.B.A. came down on its crisis like a ?ton of bricks? ? the N.F.L. like a ?ton of feathers.? ?Roger Goodell learned what Richard Nixon did not,? Tortorella said. ?If the tapes are destroyed, you keep your job.? The typical N.F.L. video library contains thousands of tapes. Each team catalogs them in different ways, but there are generally sections for professional games and college games, along with their own games and practices, filmed from a multitude of angles. According to one team, the N.F.L. asks for practice tapes once or twice a season to see if a team is using players on injured reserve. ?We had massive amounts of tapes,? Jim Fassel, the former Giants coach, said. ?We had a huge room full of them, but they were all organized, so you knew right where to go.? The Patriots have their own library, from which they sent tapes to the league offices. The league will not say how many or what the tapes contained. The N.F.L. said the Patriots signed a statement that the league was in possession of the only copies of the evidence, all of which have been destroyed. Tortorella said they should not be so sure. ?That might come back to haunt them,? he said. ?I know this: nobody ever makes one Xerox copy. Nobody ever makes one tape. Nobody ever makes one set of anything. Based on that, I?m not sure this crisis is over yet.? Tortorella said what surprised him most was how little scrutiny resulted from the destruction of the tapes. (Gregg Easterbrook of espn.com looked into the issue in September.) Tortorella said between Spygate and the Michael Vick dogfighting case ? a crisis that experts said Goodell managed superbly ? ?the league gets two black eyes, but neither belongs to him.? Wilson dismissed the Vick scandal as an N.F.L. crisis, but added to the list the health problems retired players. ?The problem is the Patriots keep winning,? Wilson said. ?That is both a blessing and a curse. By winning, they are vindicating themselves, showing this whole Spygate thing did not matter. But they are also shining a spotlight, over and over again, on what happened earlier this season. ?Spygate will be the biggest story if they win the Super Bowl.? The Patriots? perfect season so far, coupled with the controversy, have made football fans only care more about the team, said David Carter, the executive director of the Sports Business Institute at the University of Southern California. ?Love them or hate them, you care,? Carter said. ?Some people think they represent everything wrong with sports. The N.F.L. walks a fine line here. A certain amount of controversy is helpful. But if it looks like they are not coming down hard enough, they undermine the very credibility they are hoping to promote.? The case of the destroyed tapes remains unsolved as the teams meet again. Fassel said the saga had been overblown and overanalyzed. At Stanford, he used baseball players to decipher offensive signals from the opposing sideline. Everybody did it, Fassel said. ?It will eventually die down, all this Spygate stuff,? he said. ?But it?s going to be there for a while. Every time they win, it?s going to surface.?
N.F.L.?s Handling of Patriots? Tapes Is Beginning to Raise Questions By GREG BISHOP Published: December 16, 2007 The N.F.L. reacted swiftly to the spy scandal in September. Commissioner Roger Goodell promised on national television that there would be a full investigation of the New England Patriots? covert filming of Jets defensive signals. He ordered the Patriots to send any videotapes filmed in violation of N.F.L. rules to the league office. The tapes arrived sometime between Sept. 16, when Goodell said he had yet to receive them, and Sept. 20, when the N.F.L. announced all material from the investigation had been destroyed ?to ensure a level playing field.? The league has not addressed the tapes since. Two crisis-management experts used the same word ? fishy ? to describe the league?s handling of the situation, saying the destruction of the tapes raised questions about what they contained. ?The strategy is profoundly bad,? said Al Tortorella, the managing director of crisis management for Los Angeles-based Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide. ?I don?t know why they would destroy the tapes. That?s astounding. There?s no criminality here, but it sure doesn?t pass the smell test.? The Patriots? videotaping practices became a league issue during the season opener for the teams at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., when Jets security personnel caught a Patriots employee filming the Jets? defensive signals from the sideline. Goodell handed down the most severe penalty in N.F.L. history ? the loss of a first-round draft pick; a $250,000 fine for the Patriots, which funnels into the league?s general expenses fund; and a $500,000 fine for Coach Bill Belichick, which goes to N.F.L. Charities for medical research and youth fitness programs. The N.F.L. later clarified that the penalty was for the Patriots? ?totality of conduct? and not only for their actions against the Jets. The league never explained what totality of conduct meant. Presumably, the evidence was on the tapes. Questions remain: How many tapes showed evidence of cheating? In what games? In the playoffs? In the Super Bowl? By other teams? The Jets (3-10) and the Patriots (13-0), who will meet Sunday in Foxborough, Mass., declined to comment last week, referring to the matter as a ?league issue.? The N.F.L. spokesman Greg Aiello wrote in an e-mail message, ?We?ve addressed this matter, and we?re not going to readdress it this week.? Greg Wilson, a crisis counselor and senior vice president at Levick Strategic Communications in Washington, said: ?They?re rolling the dice that the whole thing is just going to go away. And here?s the thing ? a lot of this could be avoided.? Wilson sees a crisis that requires managing, a ?clear-cut case of all the parties needing to rip off the Band-Aid as soon as possible.? The goal of managing any crisis, he said, is to acknowledge the black eye and compress the time it lasts. Wilson says the American public generally wants to hear what he calls the Big Three of crisis management: I am sorry. I take responsibility. And I will fix it. He recommended that the league respond with more transparency, explaining in detail what the tapes contained and why they were destroyed. ?When you destroy evidence, most people assume guilt,? Wilson said. ?The N.F.L. is cashing in on its trust bank. They can weather the storm, but they are stringing it out longer than most companies or people can afford to.? Tortorella points to the N.B.A. in comparison. When the referee scandal surfaced earlier this year, Commissioner David Stern went on national television and gave a sincere-sounding apology. In these different reactions, Tortorella said the N.B.A. came down on its crisis like a ?ton of bricks? ? the N.F.L. like a ?ton of feathers.? ?Roger Goodell learned what Richard Nixon did not,? Tortorella said. ?If the tapes are destroyed, you keep your job.? The typical N.F.L. video library contains thousands of tapes. Each team catalogs them in different ways, but there are generally sections for professional games and college games, along with their own games and practices, filmed from a multitude of angles. According to one team, the N.F.L. asks for practice tapes once or twice a season to see if a team is using players on injured reserve. None of the three teams polled had ever been asked for tapes in the way the Patriots were. ?We had massive amounts of tapes,? Jim Fassel, the former Giants coach, said. ?We had a huge room full of them, but they were all organized, so you knew right where to go.? The Patriots have their own library, from which they sent a certain number of tapes to the league offices. The league will not say how many or what the tapes contained. The N.F.L. said the Patriots signed a statement that the league was in possession of the only copies of the evidence, all of which have been destroyed. Tortorella said they should not be so sure. ?That might come back to haunt them,? he said. ?I know this: nobody ever makes one Xerox copy. Nobody ever makes one tape. Nobody ever makes one set of anything. Based on that, I?m not sure this crisis is over yet.? Tortorella said what surprised him most was how little scrutiny resulted from the destruction of the tapes. (Gregg Easterbrook of espn.com looked into the issue in September.) Tortorella said between Spygate and the Michael Vick dogfighting case ? a crisis that experts said Goodell managed superbly ? ?the league gets two black eyes, but neither belongs to him.? Wilson dismissed the Vick scandal as an N.F.L. crisis, but added to the list the health problems retired players are experiencing. ?The problem is the Patriots keep winning,? Wilson said. ?That is both a blessing and a curse. By winning, they are vindicating themselves, showing this whole Spygate thing did not matter. But they are also shining a spotlight, over and over again, on what happened earlier this season. ?Spygate will be the biggest story if they win the Super Bowl.? The Patriots? perfect season so far, and the taping controversy, have made football fans only care more about the team, said David Carter, the executive director of the Sports Business Institute at the University of Southern California. ?Love them or hate them, you care,? Carter said. ?Some people think they represent everything wrong with sports. The N.F.L. walks a fine line here. A certain amount of controversy is helpful. But if it looks like they are not coming down hard enough, they undermine the very credibility they are hoping to promote.? The case of the destroyed tapes remains unsolved as the teams meet again. Fassel said the saga had been overblown and overanalyzed. At Stanford, he used baseball players to decipher offensive signals from the opposing sideline. Everybody did it, Fassel said. ?It will eventually die down, all this Spygate stuff,? he said. ?But it?s going to be there for a while. Every time they win, it?s going to surface.?
Its called "spoliation of evidence" by lawyers. It means that, since we don't know and can't find out what was on those destroyed tapes, we get to infer the worst: The league had clear evidence they cheated in the Super Bowl(s). Because we can't disprove that, as the evidence no longer exists.
Tainted Super Bowls. Live with it, because you'll hear about it in every conversation you have with opposing fans when the Pat's run comes up. Sorry, that's just the way it is. Think about all the kids who idolized Mark McGwire and now will never know, but always assume the worst.
