Football in Spring!

Yesterday, the NFL finally made an agreement with Matt Walsh, the former member of the Patriots coaching staff, to turn over any tapes he has and to talk with the NFL about the Patriots taping activity in past seasons. In case you haven’t been following this fascinating piece of sports drama, I’ll give a quick sum up. In a game against the NY Jets this season Eric Mangini, the Jets coach and former Patriots assistant coach, accused the Patriots of cheating by filming the signals coaches use to tell their players which plays to run. Though it is against the rules, many teams try to figure out each other’s signals. What they don’t do is tape other teams, which is expressly forbidden in the NFL’s rules. The Patriots and their coach Belichick were punished. Oddly enough, the league decided to destroy all of the evidence, without letting a single non-NFL employee view them.

Fast forward to the Super Bowl and this guy Matt Walsh surfaces in Hawaii (of course, it has to be a little exotic) to say that the league never talked to him, that he was involved in the taping and that he has information and maybe physical proof (see this post from when the story broke). Senator Arlen Specter, the head of the Judiciary Committee, demanded a review of information because the NFL has an exemption from anti-trust laws. And, let’s not forget that like myself, Senator Specter is an Eagles fan, who would love to call into question the Patriots win over the Eagles in Super bowl 39. Anyway, Mr. MG’s post gives a good summary of everything until a couple of days ago, when the league finally came out with an agreement to hear what Walsh said. The agreement protects Walsh, who has a confidentiality agreement with the Patriots.

The league promises to indemnify Walsh for any suit he might face from the Patriots. The agreement clearly indicates the NFL expects Walsh to have videotaped materials that it would like to view and then return to their rightful owners (the Patriots). The NFL agrees not to destroy this property (in order to protect Walsh, I’m assuming). Walsh can’t make the tapes public (that’s a shame), and he has to discuss their contents with the NFL. He is also protected in any conversations he has with government officials or investigators. The NFL then waives all claims it could have against Walsh. The last interesting bit of the agreement forces Walsh to donate to charity any money he might make from this whole situation to a charity of the NFL’s choosing.

This agreement has been too long in coming. Considering Bear Stearns sold itself off in a weekend, you’d think they could have gone faster than two months here. I think what Belichick did was really wrong and not the same as the other signal stealing that happened on other teams. Though I think it’s pretty silly that the Senate Judiciary Committee could get into the fray (aren’t there more important things they could deal with?), I think it’s time that the NFL be held accountable to its fans to tell the whole story of what happened, and what exactly they observed on that first set of tapes. The Patriots are the best Football team since 2000, and the fact that they may have been cheating this whole time, including during their upset victory over the St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl 36, would be shocking and devastating. In this whole strange drama it has seemed that the NFL has something serious to cover up and as a business that’s not a position a league wants to be in. The NFL enjoys huge popularity across the country, but this scandal has really shocked a lot of fans and turned them off, much the same way that steroids have in Baseball. If this really was no big deal, then it is in the NFL’s best interest to put this whole story to sleep with Walsh’s testimony and honest disclosure to the fans of what Belichick actually did.