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CLICK HERE to Register for a free account and login for a smoother ad-free experience. It's easy, and only takes a few moments.I was the one who condescendingly said we have nothing to fear? Not sure how you got that tone from it...
Here are my points:
1. Teams have little they can do openly to fight back against the NFL.
2. I SUSPECT that the Krafts are fighting back by what means they effectively can.
3. I expressed said opinion while stating that believing Kraft if spineless is a reasonable perspective.
4. I also admitted that nobody on the outside has nearly enough information to be certain about their perspective.
5. I never once implied that the NFL isn't out to get the Pats.
I would like to have seen them do more, but if they criticize the league or any NFL employee, they can be punished. They'd almost certainly lose a court battle? How else can they fight without making it worse except behind the scenes? I hope they're working to ultimately remove Goodell, and what I would prefer is that they actively search for and release incriminating evidence on the NFL. If they can find some damning proof of a blown sting and coverup, they could probably get their pics back.The Krafts could certainly do more. Every NFL exec should have a PI tailing them, then TMZ and Smoking Gun leaks with pictures and video of strip club visits, motel hookups, etc. There is no way the unethical and unseemly behavior of the league office is constrained to their day jobs.
I thought there was always someone in the locker room to prevent theft of valuables.......and you're not going to let the opposing team watch your stuff.....Haven't read the OTL article, but from reading the thread, there appears to be a break down in common sense among the Patriots haters:
If NE was stealing the opponent's offensive play sheets and deciphering their defensive signals in real time, how did they ever lose? With those kind of advantages, every game should have been a blowout win. We should have seen a string of 19-0 seasons with record-setting offenses and defenses every year.
The fact that none of that happened should set off the BS detector in rational people.
I was the one who condescendingly said we have nothing to fear? Not sure how you got that tone from it...
Here are my points:
1. Teams have little they can do openly to fight back against the NFL.
2. I SUSPECT that the Krafts are fighting back by what means they effectively can.
3. I expressed said opinion while stating that believing Kraft if spineless is a reasonable perspective.
4. I also admitted that nobody on the outside has nearly enough information to be certain about their perspective.
5. I never once implied that the NFL isn't out to get the Pats.
Here's the legal definition of defamation:
defamation
n. the act of making untrue statements about another which damages his/her reputation. If the defamatory statement is printed or broadcast over the media it is libel and, if only oral, it is slander. Public figures, including officeholders and candidates, have to show that the defamation was made with malicious intent and was not just fair comment. Damages for slander may be limited to actual (special) damages unless there is malice. Some statements such as an accusation of having committed a crime, having a feared disease or being unable to perform one's occupation are called libel per se or slander per se and can more easily lead to large money awards in court and even punitive damage recovery by the person harmed. Most states provide for a demand for a printed retraction of defamation and only allow a lawsuit if there is no such admission of error.
Read more: http://dictionary.law.com/default.aspx?selected=458#ixzz3l9yPFO7x
Tom E. Curran @tomecurran 3m3 minutes ago
Commissioning this story and burying news of owners wanting retribution is, to me, worse than 11 of 12 balls report. So transparent.
I agree, but fighting the media openly could get ugly. Though I wonder how much uglier it could actually get for the Pats. That said, if you were ultimately able to purge the NFL's corruption, the war with the media would go on. I'm not sure if the potential rewards would be worth the cost.Your can't fight the nfl directly excuses for Kraft's apparent inaction or tepid at best response don't apply to the media. The media are not the nfl or or nfl employees. They are a rich target environment. An occasional press release or besotted demand for an apology is ineffective, especially when juxtaposed with recantations and pictures hugging the very guys kicking your ass.
Last I checked, the Patriots were part of the NFL. It amazes me to no end what the league office is doing to harm one of its own franchises and, by extension, the league as a whole. The owners need to wake up to this fact.
Some of the owners are probably directing it.
I truly don't know what I'd do in the Kraft's position. I would probably either go totally nuclear or sell the team. I would find the covert and underhanded ******** intolerable.
Those quotes are buried in the final paragraphs of the story which -- to be blunt -- is an embarrassingly transparent effort by ESPN to egg the Patriots franchise prior to Thursday night’s opener.
ESPN has an armada of insiders and reporters, and they all have their own sources and viewpoints. The report that spawned national outrage in January -- that 11 of 12 Patriots footballs were underinflated by as much as two psi -- came from ESPN’s Chris Mortensen. The network recently apologized (in the wee hours of a weekday morning) for falsely reporting the Patriots taped a Super Bowl XXXVI walkthrough by the St. Louis Rams. Their legal analysis from Lester Munson throughout the last month was stridently anti-Patriots . . . and knee-bucklingly wrong. And even the highly-respected Bob Ley’s tone in discussing the story was seen to be accusatory, condescending and -- it turns out -- uninformed.
While ESPN Boston’s Mike Reiss and the dean of information purveyors, Adam Schefter, have kept things objective, that hasn’t stopped significant blowback from the New England fan base and the Patriots as the story carried on.
So, the bottom line is that Goodell tried to get away with punishing the Patriots for something they didn't do because the owners feel he should have done that eight years ago.
And, they would have gotten away with it, if not for a guy named Richard Berman, who saw through the whole thing.