The NFL “received and destroyed all material it requested from the New England Patriots concerning videotaping”
the Associated Press reported last night, adding that the team “was in compliance” with the league’s request for tapes and documents.
This report pretty much marks the end of “video-gate,” at least as a news story. But it raises a number of issues:
- If the league was going to do a thorough examination of seven year’s of tapes and documents, they did it pretty quickly, in about a week. Sound suspicious?
- Maybe. But the fact that the NFL destroyed all evidence sounds incredibly dubious to even the most naive pigskin Pollyanna. The league was obviously embarrassed by the leak of video to FoxSports last week.
The cloak-and-dagger aspect of the report will simply add fuel to the fire for the fans and media vultures looking for the league to tear more flesh from Bill Belichick and the New England organizations.
Belichick stool pigeons, meanwhile, will use the news to say that original incident, the single incident he was punished for, was an isolated incident.
The truth, as usual, probably lies somewhere in the middle. If we had it, we’d share it.
But one Cold, Hard Football Fact emerges from this news: “video-gate” is over, at least as far as the NFL, the only party that really matters here, is concerned.
Whether it’s a cover-up to prevent the league any more embarrassment for arguably its most visible figure, or whether there truly is nothing more to the story, one way or the other the story is done.
The vultures and stool pigeons can return to their roosts. There’s nothing more to see here.
