Sunday, January 25, 2015

Are the Patriots PAYING their consultants? And is this the end for Goodell?

Good God.  What a mess.

Ballgahzi, deflategate, or ball-gate, or whatever they're calling it... I'm watching it in disbelief.

Not that the Patriots cheated.  After all, all football teams cheat and sometimes get caught; is that not why refs are in the game?

But how badly they've mishandled it.

This shows either complete incompetence on the part of the PR staff, the media consultants and the team staff... OR, the owner/coach/QB are simply clueless idiots who had no idea how to end all of this.

Right this second, the biggest story in sports is this issue.  ESPN, FOXNews... just about any news outlet, is running it.  It won't go away.

And part of why it won't go away is the stupidity of those dealing with it connected to the Patriots.

This whole thing could have been over had Bellichek, Brady, or whoever owns the team, got out behind the microphone and said, you know what?  The whole thing is stupid.

Yeah, we did it.  Stupid move, trying to find every little edge; shouldn't have done it; won't do it again, thanks.

That would have been the end of it even if it HAD been on purpose... (Which, of course, it was.)

They'd have fined the team, the coach, the QB or whoever at least as much as Marshawn, taken away a draft choice and that would have been the end of it.  At this point, it would hardly be mentioned, if at all.

NOW, of course, much of the focus of the SB itself is going to be along the lines of: What ELSE are these clowns cheating about?

The ghost of Richard Nixon will tell you: it's not the crime that's the problem; it's the cover up.

These guys are stuck on flypaper and they put themselves there.  All they had to do was have somebody in the top end of the organization take responsibility for it and that would have been it.

Now, they're just plain lying.  And the more they lie, the more stuck they get.  The team is not focused, they're out of synch... any time any of these players or staff even go to a local 7-11, they're likely being bombarded with this crap and it ALL could have been avoided... or at least dramatically reduced... had somebody just taken responsibility for it.

Now, when they ARE punished, Goodell isn't going to have any choice but to hit them with a 16 pound sledge hammer.  The more they talk, the more they lie, the harder it's going to be for Goodell to just blow this off.

I simply cannot believe that they're not getting this advice from folks paid a whole hell of a lot more money than I am.  And if they're NOT getting this advice... then they need to fire whoever is providing this swimming pool full of quicksand.

Goodell has already failed... again.  He should have acted by now.  His failure here may be enough to finally break him.

And it's about time.

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