Rolling Stone: "Roger Goodell vs. Tom Brady: The Ultimate Revenge-of-Mediocrity Story"

It's like concocting a brilliant plan to break into a supermax prison. Hey, you made it, congratulations, that's a hell of a tunnel you built there. Now what was the point again?

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Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/sports/...ge-of-mediocrity-story-20150812#ixzz3iconIDEY
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Hate Taibbi and RS, but have to admit that piece was gold.

As is the case with ESPN, I can't reward RS with a click through because I don't support organizations that don't at least try to get their facts right. I'm sure it's an interesting read.

All along, I have felt that the NFL scheme was their version of the tweakers' plan to steal Bob Hope's stool sample in The Salton Sea. If you have not seen this movie, it's well worth it. Funny, tragic, and had an ending that I never saw coming.

I hate to praise RS after that horrendous UVA story, but this piece is terrific.

Thanks for the link.
That is exactly the kind of articles that need to be written about Goodell.

"There are countless ways to become famous in America. You can be born beautiful, run really fast in a straight line, revolutionize morning radio or break backboards with monster dunks. You can land a plane in the Hudson River. You can star in True Detective and spend the next year making whacked-out Lincoln commercials."

"Then there's Roger Goodell. The Commissioner of the NFL, might be the most famous person in America who's never actually done anything".

Well, neither have the Kartrashians, but its a fair comparison.

I don't hate Taibbi. He doesn't have the chops to be the next Hunter S. Thompson, which he so obviously/desperately wants, but he's not so bad. His writing style is pretty bombastic, and as a result he's guilty of his share of exaggerations. Not to excuse that, he deserves to be called out for it, but it's a far lesser offense than I've seen from most of the media that's reported on Deflategate.

My issue with Rolling Stone comes chiefly from how horribly it manufactured controversy based on lies in the UVA case. But Taibbi wasn't with RS when that happened, and he's gone public in calling the magazine out for the hatchet job that they did, and the damage it did to innocent people. So yeah, he's all right in my book.

Some highlights from the article:


If and when democracy collapses, Goodell's discipline process is what the criminal justice system will look like: secret evidence, double-jeopardy prosecutions, judges serving as prosecutors and vice versa, no right against self-incrimination, no right to face accusers, ex post facto lawmaking, conviction by inference, etc


When the accused pursues his appeal, he discovers he's not entitled to find out what the charges actually are, what evidence the league has or who's testifying against him. Moreover, as the appeal date gets closer, the charges may change. The player might be told that he is accused of non-cooperation and/or lying. He and his lawyers soon discover that they're being asked to prove a negative. Can you demonstrate you've cooperated fully? If the commissioner finds you "not credible," what's the defense against that?


"Deflategate" is like a greatest hits collects of all of Goodell's best gags. There's the prominent leak of false info, this time to Chris Mortensen at ESPN (who said 11 of 12 Patriots footballs were underinflated by 2 PSI) instead of Jason Cole. There's the goalpost-moving decision to hammer Brady for non-cooperation once the furor over the original deflation charges waned. And there was the refusal to let Brady see the evidence against him, in this case hiding it behind the attorney-client privilege Goodell claimed he enjoyed with his "independent" investigator, Ted Wells.


Now it's the first week of the 2015 preseason, and instead of talking about football, the entire country is about to tune in to a WWE-style reputational death-match that pits Brady, the game's biggest star, against Roger Goodell, the most uninteresting man in America.

This article is a friggin' homerun on so many levels.

To paraphrase the Russian novelist Nikolai Gogol: everybody has something, but Roger Goodell has nothing.

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Pure gold.

Roger Goodell*: a speck of insignificance set amidst the void of the universe in the vacuum of FAIL.

I loved this from the comments section:

"Just the mere thought the Patriots might be cheating gives them an unfair advantage over their opponents."

ctpatsfan77 said:

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/sports/...ge-of-mediocrity-story-20150812#ixzz3iconIDEY
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook

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I've quarreled with Taibbi's exaggerations in financial fraud columns, but he's perfect for the complete fraud that is Goodell. His dad Mike was a fixture on Boston TV news as a reporter for along time before he went network.

BradyFTW! said:

My issue with Rolling Stone comes chiefly from how horribly it manufactured controversy based on lies in the UVA case. But Taibbi wasn't with RS when that happened, and he's gone public in calling the magazine out for the hatchet job that they did, and the damage it did to innocent people. So yeah, he's all right in my book.

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I grew up in Charlottesville as the son of a UVa prof. I'm willing to hold out hope that RS learned a very painful lesson and will make corrections that will allow it to make significant investigative and thoughtful contributions going forward.

Anteros said:

I loved this from the comments section:

"Just the mere thought the Patriots might be cheating gives them an unfair advantage over their opponents."

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From one dynasty to another -- straight out of the Red Auerbach playbook.