UFCSaint
Super Forum Fanatic
- Joined
- Aug 11, 2007
- Messages
- 12,666
- Reaction score
- 17,604
Offline
With the recent statement by Harrison the Bountygate stuff once again comes to light. If anyone else is like me you either get tired of trying to defend it....or you start forgetting some of the details and have to brush up on it all just to defend a false statement in social media (which is never fun to do.) A lot of times I just respond to general false statements with a picture of the Superbowl ring, or a gif of Brees holding up the trophy because at this point we all know the truth. But every now and then I get irritated enough to respond with a direct factual defense to an ignorant and false statement (which most people outside of New Orleans are oblivious to.) Most of the accusations obviously come from Vikings fans because they love to blame everyone except their own organization for the constant failures. So, last summer I read the book 'Of Breads and Circuses' by Reid Gilbert which did a great job of detailing the history of the sham that our organization got put through. I encourage anyone interested to read his book and support him (it's available on Kindle for pretty cheap.)
I ended up putting my own little summary together from his book and from other articles just so I could just copy and paste when I felt like to defending any particular false statement. Below are a few highlights that I put together. Some are just tidbits to make you shake your head...others are flat out facts to dispute any accusation:
1. In this media age when no one can keep a secret, nobody 'broke' the Saints bounties story...the NFL volunteered it. Revealed it in an announcement after a private investigation. How often is the NFL forthcoming with something that will tarnish the shield?
2. One day after Mickey Loomis proclaimed his innocence over the wiretapping allegations and one day after the first round of the 2012 NFL draft, Joe Hummel announced his resignation from his job. Who was Joe Hummel? He was the NFL’s Director of Investigations, the man who was conducting the Saints’ bounty investigation. According to NFL spokesman Greg Aiello, Hummel was departing within a month for a “senior security position at a large company...a big opportunity.”
3. The NFL didn’t discipline the players for any 'on-field' misconduct. By punishing the players for “conduct detrimental to the league,” the NFL tacitly admitted that the players never participated in injurious or malicious activity on the field. Had they performed in any on-field misconduct, the NFL certainly would have identified the specific misdeeds and then levied punishment for them. Instead, the NFL punished players under the auspices of a vague, non-playing related statute that allowed Roger Goodell, by virtue of the league's collective bargaining agreement, to solely control the process of punishments and appeals. In short this enabled Goodell to produce an outcome that he alone deemed appropriate. Had Goodell ruled the accused players engaged in on-field misconduct then he wouldn't have been legally authorized to levy discipline for those transgressions. So in an effort to both levy the discipline and rule on the appeals...thus solely controlling the outcome...Goodell needed to employ the 'conduct detrimental' route (not to mention if it had been on-field violations then the NFL would've had to have used video evidence as proof.) The judge ruling this case felt this was ridiculous. If Goodell had evidence that the Saints' players were compensated for injuries inflicted to opponents on the field, then how was than an off-field violation? When Goodell tried to re-issue punishments after the appeals, the NFL had changed its wording to specifically say that all allegations were for 'conduct detrimental to the league'. This ensured that Goodell would control all punishments and outcomes. However it basically says that there was no on-field conduct to be punished...so then what did the players do on the field that was illegal? The NFL also changed wording from:
'Players...inflicting injuries'... to....'plays that caused injuries'
'Bounty Payments'...to...'Incentives'
4. On May 3rd, a day after the NFL announced the punishments and a day after the NFLPA and players responded with clear denials, the NFL trotted out Mary Jo White to bolster their position. White is a former US District Attorney, the current chair litigation at a major New York law firm, and recent nominee as Chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The NFL retained White to provide an “independent review” of the league's evidence. When questioned over her role in the process, White said on May 3rd, “In terms of 'am I independent?' the answer is yes I am.” Though the NFL positioned White as an “independent” third party, that characterization was mildy confusing – if not wholly disingenuous – considering the NFL was paying her to review evidence, while at the same time refusing to share that evidence with anyone else. That White would later lead the NFL's legal team during the Bountygate appeals' process was also noteworthy because an individual first presented as a neutral evaluator was in reality in concert with the NFL. How someone with a clear motive (and paycheck) for advancing the NFL's interested in the bounty case could be “independent” or objective is anyone's guess.
5. When the NFL claimed in its punishment of Anthony Hargrove that “Hargrove submitted a signed declaration to the league that established not only the existence of the program at the Saints, but also that he knew about and participated in it”, they made a patently false statement. Doubling down, the NFL had counsel Mary Jo White perpetuate this falsehood on May 3rd when she said:
There hasn't been any denial of the existence of that program. One of the Saints players (Hargrove) who was disciplined yesterday actually submitted a declaration in which he acknowledged that the program existed, acknowledged his participation and admitted that he lied to the NFL investigators in 2010.
This statement from Mary Jo White is an outright lie. Four days later (May 7th) Hargrove's actual declaration leaked to the public. In it, he testified that he repeatedly denied knowledge of any bounty or bounty program. Where White and the NFL said Hargrove, “acknowledged that a program existed,” Hargrove in actuality denied that it existed.
6. The NFL only identified two games (out of 54 played during the implicated time frame) that supposedly detailed “bounties” on opponents. Jason Cole originally reported that those games were the Saints' 2009 game against the Buffalo Bills and the Saints 2009 game against the New York Giants. Nothing from 2010. Nothing from 2011. Mike Florio of Pro Football talk roundly debunked the claims of injury in the Bills game where Saints' defenders (according to the NFL) were supposedly rewarded three separate $1,000 payments for “cart-offs.” In that game four Bills' players were injured, but three of those players were Bills' defenders. The other player was an offensive tackle. This accusation was nonsensical. It was impossible for Saints' defenders to have injured three players they didn't even play against. The NFL then amended their report that same night claiming the three $1,000 bounty payments happened instead in a November 2009 game against the Carolina Panthers. That, though turned out to be a specious claim as well. After all, only one player left that game with an injury - Panthers LB Thomas Davis who Saints' defenders couldn't have injured because they didn't play against him. In actuality Thomas incurred a non-contact injury while backpedaling into coverage during the fourth quarter. The NFL then amended their report yet again to say it was the Carolina Panthers game in November 2010. Goodell reported in the memo:
After a 2010 game against the Carolina Panthers...three Carolina players were seriously injured: running backs Jonathan Stewart and Tyrell Sutton, who were literally carted off the field with a head/neck and ankle injury, respectively, and quarterback Matt Moore, who was later placed on injured reserve, unable to return for the remainder of the season with a torn labrum.
These basic facts were true. The problem? None of the three players was injured on an illegal or sinister hit. The official play-by-play recap of this game confirmed that all three Panthers' players weer injured on legal plays. The other game in question on the supposed bounty ledger, the Saints/Giants 2009 game. In that game the NFL claimed Roman Harper received a $1,000 reward for injuring Giants' running back Brandon Jacobs. Sports Illustrated's Peter King corroborated the NFL's claim via Twitter:
NFL also showed evidence on ledger that S Roman Harper once was due $1,000 for knocking NYG RB Brandon Jacobs from a game.
This however, was another faulty claim. During the game in question, Brandon Jacobs only temporarily departed after a legal, un-penalized hit from Darren Sharper. The league's official play-by-play recap confirmed this. Jacobs returned and finished the game. If Roman Harper was indeed paid a $1,000 bonus after this game (this was never established only suggested) then perhaps he earned a reward for a legal sack of Eli Manning that resulted in a fumble, that the Saints later converted into a touchdown right before the first half ended. Furthermore, the fact that this ledger identified only 2 of 54 games – less than four percent of the Saints' games during the incriminated time frame – illustrated that the claims of paid, targeted bounties were far from reality.
7. Alleged Favre bounty note: Goodell disciplined Saints LB Jonathan Vilma because he claimed that he allegedly offered $10,000 in cash to any player who knocked Vikings QB Favre out of the 2009 NFC Championship game (Vilma denied this claim.) The allegation immediately took on a life of its own as the NFL later claimed that Saints DE Charles Grant also pledged $10,000, Mike Orenstein (friend of Sean Payton) pledged $10,000, and Saints coach Joe Vitt pledged $5,000 (all denied this and the NFL later exonerated Vitt of the charges.) The NFL's source was disgruntled former Saints' coach Mike Cerullo. Who said it was a handwritten note from a team meeting the night before the NFC Championship game against the Vikings. However, the 'note' was never produced and instead the NFL had Cerullo 'transcribe' what he remembered from several years prior and this according to the NFL was 'proof' of the Favre bounty. In a June 30th legal complaint, Peter Ginsberg said of the note:
The NFL did not produce the original document...the document is not dated, the NFL did not identify the date of the creation of the original document, if such a document exists, or of the type document.This is obviously important because without a verified, dated original any person can allege any thing via transcribed evidence. It's only someone's unsubstantiated word put to paper. Furthermore one of the accused, Charles Grant was on injured reserve and was not even present for the supposed team meeting.
Former Vikings coach Brad Childress stated that a Vikings player (Jimmy Kennedy) had told him that a Saints defensive unit had offered $10,000 bounty on Favre and that Kennedy had identified Anthony Hargrove as the source of his information. Kennedy denied this claim and issue a statement of his own stating that it was a lie because he had no knowledge of an alleged bounty program nor did he tell anyone that he did. Kennedy went on to say that he was never interviewed by the NFL despite Goodell's claims.
In the NFL’s final Bountygate contentions (many months later) three of the bounty accusations were not even worthy of their initial alleged nature, and thus not included as evidence of wrongdoing. The allegation of the Favre bounty Tagliabue largely dismissed, saying, “There was no evidence that Vilma or anyone else paid any money to any player for any bounty-related hit on an opposing player in the Vikings game”
8. Former Saints LB Scott Shanle said the Saints had a pay-for-performance program, not pay-to-injure. Under this program players were paid $500 - $1000 for a variety of big plays including forced fumbles, interceptions, sacks, big hits, or any other number of plays that impacted the game. Regarding the NFL's claim that the players had a pool that rewarded injuries to injure other players....from a financial standpoint why would a player risk a five figure fine from the NFL for a mere $500-$1000 reward? Shanle said terms used were 'cart-off', 'knockout', and 'kill the head' which were all part of Gregg Williams' well-documented over-the-top motivational speech tactics. Shanle said players were also fined for penalties or illegal hits.
[Continued to next post]
I ended up putting my own little summary together from his book and from other articles just so I could just copy and paste when I felt like to defending any particular false statement. Below are a few highlights that I put together. Some are just tidbits to make you shake your head...others are flat out facts to dispute any accusation:
1. In this media age when no one can keep a secret, nobody 'broke' the Saints bounties story...the NFL volunteered it. Revealed it in an announcement after a private investigation. How often is the NFL forthcoming with something that will tarnish the shield?
2. One day after Mickey Loomis proclaimed his innocence over the wiretapping allegations and one day after the first round of the 2012 NFL draft, Joe Hummel announced his resignation from his job. Who was Joe Hummel? He was the NFL’s Director of Investigations, the man who was conducting the Saints’ bounty investigation. According to NFL spokesman Greg Aiello, Hummel was departing within a month for a “senior security position at a large company...a big opportunity.”
3. The NFL didn’t discipline the players for any 'on-field' misconduct. By punishing the players for “conduct detrimental to the league,” the NFL tacitly admitted that the players never participated in injurious or malicious activity on the field. Had they performed in any on-field misconduct, the NFL certainly would have identified the specific misdeeds and then levied punishment for them. Instead, the NFL punished players under the auspices of a vague, non-playing related statute that allowed Roger Goodell, by virtue of the league's collective bargaining agreement, to solely control the process of punishments and appeals. In short this enabled Goodell to produce an outcome that he alone deemed appropriate. Had Goodell ruled the accused players engaged in on-field misconduct then he wouldn't have been legally authorized to levy discipline for those transgressions. So in an effort to both levy the discipline and rule on the appeals...thus solely controlling the outcome...Goodell needed to employ the 'conduct detrimental' route (not to mention if it had been on-field violations then the NFL would've had to have used video evidence as proof.) The judge ruling this case felt this was ridiculous. If Goodell had evidence that the Saints' players were compensated for injuries inflicted to opponents on the field, then how was than an off-field violation? When Goodell tried to re-issue punishments after the appeals, the NFL had changed its wording to specifically say that all allegations were for 'conduct detrimental to the league'. This ensured that Goodell would control all punishments and outcomes. However it basically says that there was no on-field conduct to be punished...so then what did the players do on the field that was illegal? The NFL also changed wording from:
'Players...inflicting injuries'... to....'plays that caused injuries'
'Bounty Payments'...to...'Incentives'
4. On May 3rd, a day after the NFL announced the punishments and a day after the NFLPA and players responded with clear denials, the NFL trotted out Mary Jo White to bolster their position. White is a former US District Attorney, the current chair litigation at a major New York law firm, and recent nominee as Chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The NFL retained White to provide an “independent review” of the league's evidence. When questioned over her role in the process, White said on May 3rd, “In terms of 'am I independent?' the answer is yes I am.” Though the NFL positioned White as an “independent” third party, that characterization was mildy confusing – if not wholly disingenuous – considering the NFL was paying her to review evidence, while at the same time refusing to share that evidence with anyone else. That White would later lead the NFL's legal team during the Bountygate appeals' process was also noteworthy because an individual first presented as a neutral evaluator was in reality in concert with the NFL. How someone with a clear motive (and paycheck) for advancing the NFL's interested in the bounty case could be “independent” or objective is anyone's guess.
5. When the NFL claimed in its punishment of Anthony Hargrove that “Hargrove submitted a signed declaration to the league that established not only the existence of the program at the Saints, but also that he knew about and participated in it”, they made a patently false statement. Doubling down, the NFL had counsel Mary Jo White perpetuate this falsehood on May 3rd when she said:
There hasn't been any denial of the existence of that program. One of the Saints players (Hargrove) who was disciplined yesterday actually submitted a declaration in which he acknowledged that the program existed, acknowledged his participation and admitted that he lied to the NFL investigators in 2010.
This statement from Mary Jo White is an outright lie. Four days later (May 7th) Hargrove's actual declaration leaked to the public. In it, he testified that he repeatedly denied knowledge of any bounty or bounty program. Where White and the NFL said Hargrove, “acknowledged that a program existed,” Hargrove in actuality denied that it existed.
6. The NFL only identified two games (out of 54 played during the implicated time frame) that supposedly detailed “bounties” on opponents. Jason Cole originally reported that those games were the Saints' 2009 game against the Buffalo Bills and the Saints 2009 game against the New York Giants. Nothing from 2010. Nothing from 2011. Mike Florio of Pro Football talk roundly debunked the claims of injury in the Bills game where Saints' defenders (according to the NFL) were supposedly rewarded three separate $1,000 payments for “cart-offs.” In that game four Bills' players were injured, but three of those players were Bills' defenders. The other player was an offensive tackle. This accusation was nonsensical. It was impossible for Saints' defenders to have injured three players they didn't even play against. The NFL then amended their report that same night claiming the three $1,000 bounty payments happened instead in a November 2009 game against the Carolina Panthers. That, though turned out to be a specious claim as well. After all, only one player left that game with an injury - Panthers LB Thomas Davis who Saints' defenders couldn't have injured because they didn't play against him. In actuality Thomas incurred a non-contact injury while backpedaling into coverage during the fourth quarter. The NFL then amended their report yet again to say it was the Carolina Panthers game in November 2010. Goodell reported in the memo:
After a 2010 game against the Carolina Panthers...three Carolina players were seriously injured: running backs Jonathan Stewart and Tyrell Sutton, who were literally carted off the field with a head/neck and ankle injury, respectively, and quarterback Matt Moore, who was later placed on injured reserve, unable to return for the remainder of the season with a torn labrum.
These basic facts were true. The problem? None of the three players was injured on an illegal or sinister hit. The official play-by-play recap of this game confirmed that all three Panthers' players weer injured on legal plays. The other game in question on the supposed bounty ledger, the Saints/Giants 2009 game. In that game the NFL claimed Roman Harper received a $1,000 reward for injuring Giants' running back Brandon Jacobs. Sports Illustrated's Peter King corroborated the NFL's claim via Twitter:
NFL also showed evidence on ledger that S Roman Harper once was due $1,000 for knocking NYG RB Brandon Jacobs from a game.
This however, was another faulty claim. During the game in question, Brandon Jacobs only temporarily departed after a legal, un-penalized hit from Darren Sharper. The league's official play-by-play recap confirmed this. Jacobs returned and finished the game. If Roman Harper was indeed paid a $1,000 bonus after this game (this was never established only suggested) then perhaps he earned a reward for a legal sack of Eli Manning that resulted in a fumble, that the Saints later converted into a touchdown right before the first half ended. Furthermore, the fact that this ledger identified only 2 of 54 games – less than four percent of the Saints' games during the incriminated time frame – illustrated that the claims of paid, targeted bounties were far from reality.
7. Alleged Favre bounty note: Goodell disciplined Saints LB Jonathan Vilma because he claimed that he allegedly offered $10,000 in cash to any player who knocked Vikings QB Favre out of the 2009 NFC Championship game (Vilma denied this claim.) The allegation immediately took on a life of its own as the NFL later claimed that Saints DE Charles Grant also pledged $10,000, Mike Orenstein (friend of Sean Payton) pledged $10,000, and Saints coach Joe Vitt pledged $5,000 (all denied this and the NFL later exonerated Vitt of the charges.) The NFL's source was disgruntled former Saints' coach Mike Cerullo. Who said it was a handwritten note from a team meeting the night before the NFC Championship game against the Vikings. However, the 'note' was never produced and instead the NFL had Cerullo 'transcribe' what he remembered from several years prior and this according to the NFL was 'proof' of the Favre bounty. In a June 30th legal complaint, Peter Ginsberg said of the note:
The NFL did not produce the original document...the document is not dated, the NFL did not identify the date of the creation of the original document, if such a document exists, or of the type document.This is obviously important because without a verified, dated original any person can allege any thing via transcribed evidence. It's only someone's unsubstantiated word put to paper. Furthermore one of the accused, Charles Grant was on injured reserve and was not even present for the supposed team meeting.
Former Vikings coach Brad Childress stated that a Vikings player (Jimmy Kennedy) had told him that a Saints defensive unit had offered $10,000 bounty on Favre and that Kennedy had identified Anthony Hargrove as the source of his information. Kennedy denied this claim and issue a statement of his own stating that it was a lie because he had no knowledge of an alleged bounty program nor did he tell anyone that he did. Kennedy went on to say that he was never interviewed by the NFL despite Goodell's claims.
In the NFL’s final Bountygate contentions (many months later) three of the bounty accusations were not even worthy of their initial alleged nature, and thus not included as evidence of wrongdoing. The allegation of the Favre bounty Tagliabue largely dismissed, saying, “There was no evidence that Vilma or anyone else paid any money to any player for any bounty-related hit on an opposing player in the Vikings game”
8. Former Saints LB Scott Shanle said the Saints had a pay-for-performance program, not pay-to-injure. Under this program players were paid $500 - $1000 for a variety of big plays including forced fumbles, interceptions, sacks, big hits, or any other number of plays that impacted the game. Regarding the NFL's claim that the players had a pool that rewarded injuries to injure other players....from a financial standpoint why would a player risk a five figure fine from the NFL for a mere $500-$1000 reward? Shanle said terms used were 'cart-off', 'knockout', and 'kill the head' which were all part of Gregg Williams' well-documented over-the-top motivational speech tactics. Shanle said players were also fined for penalties or illegal hits.
[Continued to next post]
Last edited:
