So, is Spygate really over? NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell did his best to put a period on this damaging episode for the New England Patriots and the league. But ESPN’s live coverage left the distinct impression that this cloud will hang over this league and franchise for a long time.
It was fascinating that the story played out in real time on ESPN on the same day that SportsBusiness Daily reported that ESPN will go live with “SportsCenter” during the day starting in August. The sports world is well acquainted with the notion of blanket media coverage. ESPNews has been around for more than a decade now. But opening up a daylong live news hole on ESPN’s flagship network takes things to another level.
Ask anyone in politics what it has meant to have minute-to-minute TV on the cable news networks. Every controversy, no matter how consequential, trivial or otherwise, immediately goes to the top of the heap. And the analysis and attempt to understand events unfolds before your eyes.
As for the news cycle, well, can you say “shrinkage”? Once upon a time, if there was a bad story in the morning paper, you had all day to prep a response for the evening news. Today, that story breaks overnight on the paper’s Web site, the cable nets aren’t far behind, and you have until 5 a.m. to get your story straight for the morning shows. If something breaks during the day, you will endure a beating every 10 minutes on cable until you get on air with a response. And merely getting a statement out or putting your spokesperson on air is never enough. You have to get talking points to friendly surrogates, your spin to the analysts who want to look plugged in so they get invited back, and your counter-spin to the segment producers, who hopefully feed it to the anchors. With texting, this process continues right up to, and sometimes during, the segment. It’s constant monitoring and relentless care and feeding. For already overworked communications directors, the choice is simple: feed the cable beast whenever it’s hungry, or the beast feeds on you.
Last Tuesday, the NFL was cable kibble. I thought Goodell did an excellent job during his press conference. He was definitive and in command, and he did his best to put the issue to rest. But it was the 90 minutes of dead air before the press conference that killed the league. The delay in getting Goodell before the media was a huge blunder. On a day when the NFL should have had complete control over the message, it allowed ESPN to hijack the story and take it in an unwelcome direction.
Members of the media watch video footage
taken by former Patriots employee Matt Walsh
before an NFL news conference last Tuesday.
The NFL, obviously affected by the fallout over its destruction of tapes during the initial Spygate go-round in September, opted to err on the side of full disclosure and release the Matt Walsh tapes to the media. But why release that video to an assembled media waiting around for a press conference? Didn’t the league count on ESPN putting the tapes up live? It should have. (The beast loves video. Remember, the political media had known about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright for months, but it wasn’t until DVDs of his sermons surfaced that the Wright issue went nuclear for Sen. Barack Obama.) So if the NFL’s message of the day was going to be “nothing new,” showing Walsh’s grainy film for more than an hour without any context or explanation made zero sense. The videos showed down-and-distance, the opposing coaches’ signals, and then the play from an end zone view. That last part was new, and ESPN jumped all over it.
Patriots owner (and Goodell ally) Robert Kraft must have been watching his team’s handiwork and going nuts. The longer ESPN had no Goodell, the more video it showed. And as the video rolled, the network’s on-air trio was getting worked into a bigger and bigger frenzy and began engaging in increasingly irresponsible speculation about what they were seeing. Hello? Anyone have cable at 280 Park Ave.? At least send someone out to stand at the podium and dance just to retake the air.
It didn’t matter how many times Trey Wingo said, “This is speculation.” In less than an hour, ESPNers Mark Schlereth and Cris Carter took the story from “this is nothing new” back to “the Patriots are cheaters.” Without any facts or reporting to back it up, ESPN made the incredible leap that these tapes had to have been used during the course of the games. And once they crossed that line, Schlereth and Carter — with Trey flying Wingo-man — were gonzo.
Here are some of the nuggets:
Carter: “I don’t think the general public understands the ramifications with watching tape during the game and the advantage it gives one team.”
Schlereth: “I wouldn’t tape it if I wasn’t able to use it.””
Carter: “I don’t get the information if it doesn’t help me. And if you look at the correlation between the success of the New England franchise the 20 years that [Bill] Belichick got there and from the time that they supposedly start videotaping games, it has to be an advantage. It has to be utilized.””
Schlereth: “Yes, there is a reason here that the New England Patriots have been as good as they’ve been.”
Carter: “This is cheating.””
Schlereth: “These, to me, besmirch the National Football League. You look at these tapes right here and you cannot tell me that they’re not, they would not do this if there was not some decided advantage you would gain from these tapes.””
Wingo: “Everybody that played with the Patriots, there is now going to be, for lack of a better term, a ‘Scarlet Letter’ on them.””
And on and on it went. The implication was clear, and the great lie of Spygate — that the Patriots used these tapes to gain advantage during games — was alive once again. It’s one thing for ESPN to speculate on what the commissioner might say or to identify questions that he needs to answer. It’s another for commentators to reach their own conclusions before hearing what he had to say, or to answer his questions for him.
Enter the commissioner, finally. Is Spygate closed? Goodell said, “I don’t know where else I would turn.” Asked if there was any evidence these tapes were ever used during a game, Goodell said that Walsh “very specifically” said they were not used during games and that they stayed in his possession “the entire game.” Now we have Walsh corroborating what Belichick and the Patriots have said all along, with the commissioner in agreement, that the tapes were not used during any games — including Super Bowls or AFC Championship games.
Case closed, right? Not for ESPN. Schlereth: “As great as they were, and as great as this dynasty was, did they use that during the course of the game? And that is the question that will be asked from here until eternity. Did they use it to gain an unfair advantage? It may never be answered. But it will always be out there.” Also still out there is Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Comcast), who obviously hasn’t heard that we are a nation at war, that people are losing their homes and that the economy is tanking. So, sadly for the Pats and the NFL, Spygate lives.
The NFL had the ball last week and fumbled. ESPN did what cable news nets do: It created more heat than light. But the fact that the commissioner couldn’t kill this controversy last Tuesday also says a lot about the times in which we live. For more than 30 years, we have lived in a post-Watergate media world where cynicism reigns. (It’s called Spygate for a reason.) Too often, the voices of authority carry none. That can’t be good news. And more and more coverage of stories like this eating up more and more of our day only means more of the same.
Steve Bilafer is a lifelong Patriots observer and founding editor of SportsBusiness Daily. He will be frequently writing on topics and issues in sports business, politics and the media. He can be reached at stevebilafer@comcast.net.
