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November 9, 2007

More Spygate: Goodell on "sweeping it under the rug"

Hey all --

The NFL held its fall meetings a couple of weeks ago in Philadelphia, but the transcript of a Q&A league commissioner Roger Goodell held during the meetings has just today been made available. During the session, Goodell was asked about the perception that the NFL was sweeping things under the rug when it came to the Patriots' spying incident, specifically the way the materials Goodell demanded from New England were destroyed and their contents not discussed.

"First, we were the ones who brought it out so if we’re sweeping it under the rug…we’re the ones who raised it," Goodell said. "I don’t agree with that assessment. I think we dealt with it forcefully, aggressively, and effectively.

"The thing that you want in discipline is to make sure that it doesn’t happen again and the other clubs understand that there are very significant consequences if policies are violated. I think that message was sent. We also want to send that message to our fans so they understand that all teams are playing by the same rules. The inference that you make in regards to us destroying the tapes, that was our intention from the get-go. There was no purpose for those. We said that we wanted those materials destroyed because we didn’t want anyone to have that material or the notes that could’ve come out from that. We went ahead and did that as we expected to do. Everything that we found was consistent with what we thought."

Also in that Q&A, Goodell was asked about Buffalo owner Ralph Wilson's proposal that Bills play one regular-season game a year for the next five years in Toronto, which he said there was no objection to from any of the other owners; and the league's ongoing issue with cable companies who do not carry NFL Network, or want to charge subscribers a monthly fee for the network, as though it were a premium channel.

Posted by Shalise Manza Young  at 4:04 PM | Permalink