The Goddell Era is now officially the NFL's Cheating Era. From a prominent Viking's blog:
"a source said Favre had continued to use a Packers-issued cell phone and that when the team checked the phone records it found “repeated calls to coach Brad Childress and offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell.”"
Furthermore:
"The Vikings, if found guilty, could face penalties that include loss of draft picks and/or fines."
This saga is getting more and more interesting. Did Favre call these guys intentionally, knowing that he would be caught and the Vikings punished for "tampering" with him? Was this a way to preclude him from getting traded to Minnesota so that the Packers could save face? Or, was Favre a complete and total idiot, ruining his chances to play for the Vikings? My sense is that option b is much more likely. Favre is a total idiot.
What makes this wrinkle interesting is a few things:
1. The Vikings have repeatedly said Tavaris Jackson "is their guy no matter what." In fact, Childress has gone out of way numerous times to say this, if only to reassure his QB that he has the starting job, confidence of the coach, blah blah blah.
2. Hot on the heels of SpyGate, this allegation gives Goddell an opportunity to crack down on cheating. Tampering with players, and this is a perfect example of it if the allegations are true, is cheating and cheating is what Goddell needs to fight right now. At least from the standpoint of public relations, if you ask me. So will he go the extra mile to punish the Vikings if these allegations are true? Goddell's credibility is frankly on the line right now. After handling Spygate so poorly and basically covering up the entire goddamn thing, the NFL needs draconian measures to clean up their perception of being able to effectively police the NFL and enforce it's rules. If Godddell tries to cover this one up, what will the fans think?
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5 comments:
"Did Favre call these guys intentionally, knowing that he would be caught and the Vikings punished for "tampering" with him? Was this a way to preclude him from getting traded to Minnesota so that the Packers could save face?"
- Those are some pretty intense conspiracy theories. He probably thought the Vikings are a good team without a QB and wanted to play there.
Here is the perfect time to illustrate my point from a few months ago, and I'll expand on this tomorrow in Foil of the Oven.
This infraction is really no different than spygate. It's just a breach of the rules. Arlen Spector and ESPN have inflated this whole thing to the level that we must all believe that every Patriots victory is now tainted and as if it is some type of league-shattering news. It was just a breach of the rules. Unless Arlen Spector and ESPN want to suggest a full out fuckfest of an investigation into these calls, then I think they need to soften their spygate stance.
I realize that Spector thing went away quickly, and it's really just a dead issue now, but I couldn't help brining it up because this fits so well. The way that ESPN handled the Spygate thing really made me realize how low they have sunk. I didn't even watch the ESPYs. In a year when three of my favorite teams won championships, I didn't watch the ESPYS. I still don't even know who won. The one thing I do know is that they had a guy from NSYNC hosting it.
weeksy - you're right, that theory is total bs..was just throwing it out there for fun, but now i feel like a horse's ass
nick - i agree with you about ESPN. i've thought the same thing about most media outlets, including ABC / ESPN, and the problem is hard to get a handle on -- these guys can basically sit behind their computer screens and write whatever the hell they want, whether or not it's true, and still have millions of people read it and assume it's true; basically they have little to no accountability, just like people in the blogging world
so for them to get all judgemental and blow something out of proportion is not too surprising for me; it just leads to fewer fans or readers in the long-run, hurting their product
Completely agree with you guys about ESPN, its become more about the entertainment than the sports. Sportscenter used to be unreal back in the 90's when it was a ton of highlights packed into a 30 minute or hour show. Now they have "Who's Now" and "Titletown"... I can't tell you how much both of those things piss me off. Also, aren't they planning on making the morning Sportscenter into one massive live show, like the Today Show? They have really gotten away from what got them here, they're borderline a sports tabloid.
One other thing that really gets me... how they've gone away from highlights to let more talking heads analyze. Perfect example was NFL Primetime, which was legitimately my favorite show on TV. You got to see all the highlights of the games that you didnt get to see in the shorter clips from Sportscenter or the news. Now they have Merrill Hodge (an absolute moron in my book, and opinionated to boot) and Mike Ditka sitting at a desk talking about the games after showing maybe 30 seconds of highlights if you're lucky. Miserable.
Oh, and I confirmed my question above... Hannah Storm:
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.arts.tv/2008-05/msg02032.html
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