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Leagues and Governing Bodies

NFL owners to meet amid investigation flurry

Call it the NFL’s Era of Investigations — and their very public follow-up reports.

Beginning in 2012 with the so-called Bountygate investigation of the New Orleans Saints, followed by investigations into matters of bullying (Miami, 2013-14) and domestic violence (Baltimore, last year), the league now finds itself in the grips of Deflategate.

As league owners descend on San Francisco for their spring meeting this week, never has the NFL been so encased in investigations. The $5 million Ted Wells report on the New England Patriots’ purported deflation of game balls before the AFC championship game is just the latest chapter, and very likely not the last, of the move by the NFL to push problems to third-party lawyers who then publicize their conclusions.

A sport that for so long kept its dirty laundry in-house now sees much of it flapping in the public eye in the form of these public reports — all of it open to slings and arrows from fans, the media, and the NFL’s own factions.

   
Media scrutiny has been intense during recent league investigations, with the league now in the grips of Deflategate..
“[Investigation and investigative reports are] a mechanism commonly utilized in corporate America to do the right thing, or signal that the right thing is being done,” said Steven Sparling, who conducts corporate investigations of Fortune 100 companies as a partner at Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel.

The extension of that practice to the NFL, Sparling said, comes with the league having become one of the country’s top entertainment brands.

“The media scrutiny is very high. It’s a big public profile. You are scrutinized by fans, players and agents, and it gets picked up in the 24/7 news cycle,” Sparling said. “This is a more natural progression for the kind of business the NFL has evolved into and the world we live in.

“Investigations are conducted knowing that litigation often comes afterwards.”

But there are consequences. Sources last week said a sense of “investigation fatigue” is creeping into the league, especially in the aftermath of the Wells report. Those aftereffects include an appeals fight with Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and a souring relationship between New England owner Robert Kraft and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

“You don’t need to call Ted Wells every time there is an issue,” said one source close to the league, who like many requested anonymity for this story for not wanting to publicly disagree with the NFL. This source said the NFL is responding to mob mentality by commissioning reports every time a problem arises.

Said another football source: “Tired of the investigations, the cost, the constant uproar, the energy spent on things that never seem to end well.”

A third source who does business with the NFL said, “It’s like they have no strategy, and stuff leaks out of that building. Then they get themselves in trouble. Then the investigation route takes hold.”

The investigations clearly have a human toll. Sources said the investigation last fall by former FBI investigator Robert Mueller into whether anyone at league headquarters had seen the videotape of Ray Rice knocking out his then-fiancée before it became public was particularly intrusive. Every NFL employee, more than 1,000 people, had to turn over electronic records — business and personal — to the Mueller team, which ultimately found that no one had seen the video.

In the more immediate case involving the Patriots, Brady declined to turn over his electronic records, even when promised by Wells that the quarterback could pick out the relevant information and then send it to him.

Brady’s refusal to do so clearly played a role in the four-game suspension he was handed by the league last week. The collective-bargaining agreement requires him to cooperate in investigations, though a question his lawyer, Jeffrey Kessler, is sure to raise on appeal is whether cooperation requires him to hand over personal messages.

Many within the league are left wondering how it came to be that a three-time Super Bowl MVP faces suspension for not handing over his private correspondences about something seemingly so minor as ball pressure. In the interim, team owners and executives are likely to stand by the commissioner.

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones last week was quoted as throwing his support to Goodell. A top team executive said succinctly via text message, “Got to trust our commissioner!” And another high-ranking team executive thought the punishment had gone overboard — as many did — but he also said that his owner would get in line behind the commissioner in the case.

As for the Patriots, what will they do about their penalty, which includes a $1 million fine and loss of a first-round draft pick next year? Appeal? Sue? Take the penalty and move on? The team by late last week had not said.

One former high-ranking Patriots executive believes they will fight.

“I don’t think the NFL has a good grip on how to punish people,” said Lou Imbriano, the team’s former chief marketing officer who now runs his own agency, TrinityOne. “It’s like the penalty got picked out of thin air. I can’t believe they will just sit back and say, ‘We will give you our No. 1 draft pick’ over this.”

But Sparling, the investigations lawyer, said of the report, “It is difficult to criticize the factual findings of a very thorough investigation when you have refused to produce what are essentially key documents.”

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