I've been reading Vic Ketchman for the past two years and, actually, see him as one of the most perceptive football analysts anywhere. He does a GREAT job breaking down games and is to the point.
That being said, everyone makes mistakes, and the asterisk (especially considering it is an OFFICIAL team site) is a huge misstep.
It is a huge mis-step because the NFL is actually built upon a foundation of subterfuge, spying and intrigue. There is nothing Boy Scoutish about the NFL. It's always been that way, and for anybody to attack that foundation is foolish unless they want to alter the way the league functions at its roots.
IMO, it's the end of the NFL as an edgey product if this assault continues. IMO, the NFL is in its dying days as the NFL that we know because there is a weird tone to take down people that is rampant in the current and recent writings and opinons. Now it's all about taking down, tearing down, trashing the work of the NFL's best people, and I don't mean just Bill. Fans do it, and other fans retalitate. There is retribution in mind for Bill backers, and I see that every time there is a slight mis-step by another team or coach, Bill backers leap to skewer the guy as if he was KGB spying on America. It's ramping up, not down. It's not going away because somebody has started a snowball rolling down hill, and it's a steep hill, and nobody is going to stop the snowball.
That's why I think it's suicide for what Peter King and others are doing over a misdemeanor, a jaywalking incident. They are exagerating this thing for the purpose of pay back, and retribution. This is not a winning strategy. Bill backers are actually contributing to this whole problem by keeping it alive every time a Mangini team barks signals on the Ravens. Bill backers could even end up pushing soemthing far more ugly into the limelight to ease the strain on Bill, and to get pure retribution. This will take down the NFL because the target's backers will do the same thing. It's a war.
IMO the only way to fix this war is for the entire political climate to stop with the blame and retribution theme, because it has filtered down to sports. Sports retribution themes are nothing but a copy-cat edition of what the War on Terror is: Blaming the underclass for their own misery. We're so jacked up on blame and retribution now that a little old lady is a threat at TSA. A little old lady in a wheelchair must remove her shoes and prove that she's not a terrorist, and the old lady will be punished heavily for resisting. That's the mentality driving everything we do now: Paranoia and retribution and the nitpicking that makes old ladies a threat.
This is what we're doing to the NFL: Beating on it and tearing it apart to see what little bombs might be in a coach's shoes. It's RIDICULOUS, but so is what is causing this mentality throughout our society. Is there an escape for the NFL as an icon of American Imperialist Power? Hell no. The sport is under attack from every angle, including its own supporters. Peter King won't get his final glory until the NFL is wobbling and under daily attack in the tabloids.
My only question is: How long can it hold out in its current form? Not more than a few years, I think. Then it will be 24 and 7 about cheating, steroids, and tearing apart personal lives, and tearing apart the record books to set it all straight for the Retribution Freaks, the Paranoia Freaks, the War on Terror Freaks, the super Do Gooder Freaks.
MLB is faced with this a little sooner than the NFL. Watch what happens to MLB and figure it as the California Effect (it happens there first, and filters east in a couple of years.) Now MLB is in the news constantly for the purpose of the do-gooders getting their retribution. It's messy, it's ugly, it's contentious, and American TV loves it.
Part of me is holding my breath waiting for the next shoe to drop on the NFL. It may not be about Bill or the Patriots. We have a spying eye on everything now, and writers want to grab the glory of reporting the scandal of the century for the world's tightest sports organization. Why? I think it's because politically we're doing the same thing around the world: Spying on people, digging up information, casting little people as the evil ones, blame, retribution, the desire to nuke everything that doesn't eat Mad Cow Disease at MacDonald's and swill it down with liquified plastic and sugar. We're going mad and the NFL cannot escape our madness.
