- Joined
- Sep 9, 2008
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First of all, his comment was purely tongue in cheek. He was obviously joking around.
Secondly, and more importantly--if you're trying to claim that Goodell didn't make a monumental mistake regarding the issue of Belichick continuing to tape defensive hand signals after a letter had been recently issued within weeks to ALL NFL teams, then you're not understanding what occurred. It was widely known around the league that many teams were taping defensive hand signals, so he issued a letter for everyone to stop. Belichick continued through the first half of week #1 (coincidentally at the New York Jets, who also were known to do the same thing), and should have been punished---but not anywhere at the level of media ignorance that occurred, where incorrect rumors were rampant, and Goodell happened to make a nice name for himself as an introduction to the league as commissioner.
He obviously realized his mistake, and the serious impact that it had on turning fans off from football, as noted by the way he has handled all of the subsequent penalties and scandals of other teams.
If you're seriously going to claim that paying players to injure other players (New Orleans Saints Bountygate), or paying off the speciman collector when you're obviously doing illegal drugs (Denver's Von Miller--SIX game suspension), aren't bigger stories that were quietly swept under the rug, you're lying to yourself. There have been plenty of major "cheating" scandals where teams have gotten a competitive advantage and it wasn't much of a story whatsoever. That also includes plenty of examples of other teams failing to respect the salary cap by overspending, which is intended to act as an equalizer for the competitiveness of the sport itself.
That tends to leave some of the fanbase as jokingly questioning all of the scandal punishment that has occurred since 2007, which is to be expected. No one is claiming a "conspiracy theory" as you say, but there are some who don't believe that the issues were handled on an equal level.
