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Tuesday’s Spygate News Blitz Exposes NFL’s PR Warfare

By Matthew Rewinski

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And you thought your first day back at work after Labor Day weekend was busy.

Bright and early on Tuesday morning, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and the NFL got right to work in the headlines, with the following three events occurring virtually simultaneously:

And later on Tuesday, the NFL Network unveiled the hour-long Super Bowl special “America’s Game: The 2014 Patriots” for the first time.

In case you were busy actually working and didn’t have time to read either or both articles, the ESPN report, although extremely well-written, devotes 9,120 of 10,704 words to an exhaustive chronology of Spygate, chock full of details that were mostly common knowledge back in 2008, such as videotapes being destroyed and Senator Arlen Spector’s obsession with the case. Once the feature explained everything that most people interested in the subject already knew while Justin Timberlake’s “FutureSex/Love Sounds” was #1 on on the Billboard charts, it dove headfirst into explaining how and why Roger Goodell punished New England over Deflategate as harshly as he did.

Namely, it’s what most people suspected: most NFL owners wanted the Patriots punished severely for past grievances, real or imagined. The SI report, while it differed in focus, became a laundry list of what opposing teams suspected the Patriots were doing, which was all over the board, from suspecting the Patriots of digging through their trash cans to sweeping their locker rooms for bugs, only to find nothing at all. Every source in the SI story is anonymous.

Given the copious research and time that both the SI and ESPN stories took (ESPN claims to have spoken to dozens of sources, owners, and coaches, all of which are “unnamed” except Bill Polian and Mike Martz), these stories were both ready to roll well in advance of Tom Brady’s suspension being overturned by Judge Richard Berman last Thursday.

Why keep these two bombshells locked and loaded until after the verdict dropped?

It’s fantastic “We’re right and y’all know it” PR for the NFL, regardless of how Berman’s decision went.

Scenario One: The league wins. The court upholds their suspension of Tom Brady under Article 46, which the league contended gives the commissioner unlimited power to punish players regardless of evidence, guilt, or lack thereof. The SI and ESPN stories go live just as everyone gets back to work after Labor Day weekend, and the world slurps it up like a milkshake on a July afternoon as proof that the Patriots and Brady needed to be punished so severely it would convince them to never cheat again.

Scenario Two: Brady wins in court, which, of course, is what happened. Despite getting incinerated by Judge Berman’s decision, the NFL now has both the ESPN and SI feature stories locked and loaded, full of juicy details (most of which were common knowledge in 2008) on the front page of every sports publication on the planet, reminding everyone that New England had to be punished with an iron fist because of a 9-year-old scandal that was already punished with the most severe penalty in league history at the time.

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Where this becomes rather Machiavellian is that Goodell is portrayed in the ESPN feature as a sniveling putz who first tried to cover up the Spygate incident and avoid any type of outside investigation, and then calls for a public hanging of the Patriots almost ten years later to appease his salty billionaire bosses. It’s easy to miss, given that the article doesn’t ramble to that conclusion until the last few paragraphs of a piece that’s nearly 11,000 words long.

Fortunately for the NFL, that doesn’t matter when most media outlets are looking for quick, sizzling headlines to grab people’s attention. The easiest way to do that? Dredge up the ol’ PATRIOTS CHEAT grudge. Check out what several prominent publications decided to go with as a headline describing the new-old-news story:

Time: “ESPN Says Patriots SpyGate Scandal More Extensive Than NFL Revealed”

Business Insider: “Bombshell ESPN report says Patriots’ ‘Spygate’ scandal was way worse than people realized”

Pro Football Talk: “Report: Patriots’ Spygate cheating was widespread over many years”

Deadspin: “Bombshell ESPN Report: The Patriots Were Huge Cheaters and Roger Goodell Covered It Up”

You get the idea.

Meanwhile, Roger Goodell whips up his own gasp-worthy headline on ESPN Radio’s Mike and Mike program, dropping this perfectly bite-sized (er, headline-sized) firecracker:

“I am open to changing my role” (referring to his role in the league’s disciplinary process.

Great googley-moogely! The commissioner is open to changing his role in the disciplinary process? That’s quite the 180 after electing to hear Tom Brady’s appeal by himself after the NFLPA requested an independent arbitrator, no?

When it came to the subject of his own authority in disciplinary appeals, though, the part of the show that didn’t make headlines was much more telling:

“We believe that the standards of the NFL are important to uphold. We believe that you don’t delegate that responsibility or those standards.”

Goodell went on to say, “A designated discipline officer or panel to make the initial decision would make for a better system. But we also have resistance to third-party arbitration.”

Ok. So after all that, here’s the rub:

The NFL has been using ESPN, their $15.2 billion-dollar partner, to leak every bit of misinformation about New England since the AFC Championship Game. Chris Mortensen’s “11 of 12 Patriots balls were 2.0 PSI under” report. Stephen A. Smith being played like a fiddle and reporting that Tom Brady destroyed his phone. ESPN’s report on February 18th, 2015 that couldn’t figure out if a Patriots attendant or an NFL employee was responsible for trying to bring an unapproved kicking ball into the AFC championship game. ESPN’s legal analyst Lester Munson being one of a handful of believers in an ocean of skeptics that doggedly insisted that the NFL would win in court.

SI’s been used in the same way, although not as extensively. Monday Morning Quarterback author Peter King is easily the NFL’s most frequent disseminator of misinformation, whether it’s reporting from a source that Ray Rice’s wife said things she never said, or confirming Chris Mortensen’s 11-of-12 2.0 PSI report and adding that all 12 of the Colts footballs were regulation pressure, or…well, you can go as far back as you want, really.

And then the NFL expects fans to believe that two scathing exposés about New England’s confirmed and alleged cheating came out:

1)      Three days after Brady’s suspension was vacated and the NFL was publicly humiliated;

2)      The same day the NFL Network airs “America’s Game: The 2014 Patriots”, an hour-long production about New England’s journey to the Super Bowl that, of course, makes sure to mention Deflategate;

3)      The day before another NFL documentary, titled “Do Your Job”, which NFL.com describes as an “inside look at the Patriots’ title run” is scheduled to air?

4)      Two days before the New England/Pittsburgh season opener, which Goodell will not be attending, and when New England will unveil their Super Bowl banner?

Yahoo Sports columnist Dan Wetzel probably said it best: “It’s also inaccurate to argue that the NFL didn’t engage in extremely aggressive media tactics that resulted in prejudicial stories against New England that shaped everything.”

“This case isn’t and never will be cut and dried. It’s one reason why, thus far, the “winner” has been determined by who had their preferred storyline control the discussion.”

“On that point, it’s been a complete knockout by commissioner Roger Goodell. “

One might say it’s more probable than not that Tuesday’s media blitz was, unfortunately, more of the same.

Next: Patriots Breakfast Club: Week 1 Steelers Vs. Patriots

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