Tag Archives: Roger Goodell

What’s the Problem?

6 Dec

Roger Goodell is on the cover of TIME, and everybody’s all pissy about it.

I don’t see what the big deal is.  I, for one, think it’s long overdue. 

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Duncan Blows Darlington: the Rage of Fake Jeff

16 Nov

Most of you (excepting only those too old or boring to use twitter) know @FakeJeffDuncan.  He should need no introduction.  If you don’t know the guy, his twitter handle should explain everything.  Fake Jeff Duncan, to be clear, is not a fan of Real Jeff Duncan.  140 characters wasn’t enough to contain his disgust at Duncan’s latest masterpiece, so he has taken to the blogosphere.

Take it away, Fake Jeff.

New Orleans Saints shouldn’t get in a bidding war for Sean Payton

So we’ve learned from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell that the New Orleans Saints and Sean Payton are negotiating a new long-term contract extension. So let me get this straight. A full 10 months after the league reportedly rejected Payton’s original deal the exiled head coach and club are finally trying to iron out a new deal.

At this point, Scooter, if Herr Goodell told me the sky was blue I would immediately assume the sky was, indeed, any color but blue. Naturally, you go ahead and simply copy and paste whatever comes out of his office.

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Common Sense

4 Jul

Happy fourth! Before we get started on this quick 4th of July special post, let me warn you: this is not an off-topic post, nor is it going to be political – it is Saints-related. But you’re going to have to stay with me for a few paragraphs. If you haven’t been reading this blog very long, I’m a History guy, and I like to infuse a little history into the Angry Who Dat whenever possible. Of course, today is a perfect opportunity for a bit of that.

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The SportsJoes Podcast

24 Jun

The Angry Who Dat records his first podcast

Another first for the Angry Who Dat: this morning I joined the Sports Cajun from SportsJoes.com for a chat.

We talked bountygate, of course, the Brees contract situation, how the fuck Mike Florio became the voice of Saints fans, and what to expect from the 2012 season (hint: not 6-man blitzes with 40 seconds left in a playoff game).

Hit the link below to listen, and don’t forget to follow @SportsCajun on twitter.

SportsJoes Podcast  >>

“Commissioner Goodell Has Made a Dreadful Mistake”

16 Jun

Those aren’t my words, they’re the words of Jonathan Vilma’s attorney, Peter Ginsberg.  Basically sums this whole thing up, though, doesn’t it?  Here’s a few other things he had to say, all according to Jim Varney at the Times Picayune:

Dude...like, why would the NFL lie, man?

“Unfortunately, what it says to me is Commissioner Goodell has made a dreadful mistake. After what Jonathan and the other players have been put through, to suggest the players are being presented with any kind of fair hearing based on what has been presented today is pure fantasy. [...] The thin production today doesn’t link any of the players to a bounty system, and that’s consistent with what we know to be true – there was no bounty system.”

On no witnesses being produced by the league: “That’s because there are no credible witnesses who could substantiate the commissioner’s allegations.”

On the $10,000 Favre bounty accusation against Vilma: “There could be nothing credible about that because it never happened.”

“Jonathan wants to participate in a fair forum. What unfolds Monday is what unfolds Monday.”

What unfolds Monday is what unfolds Monday.

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It’s Appeal Week (now with bongos)

2 Apr

As punishment for bountygate, Sean Payton is forced to participate in a Jimmy Buffett concert.

It’s appeal week, Who Dats.  And every one of us has a different opinion on what’s going to happen behind the closed doors of the commissioner’s office.  Will Payton and Loomis and Vitt go in and let the commissioner have it?  Will they throw red paint on the commish’s new suit and be dragged out by their heels screaming “Hypocrite!” while Goodell’s secretary gasps in horror?  Or will they go groveling to the man on their knees, begging for their jobs, as one local media member suggests from atop a horse so high it defies the laws of physics?

I don’t know.  We’ll never know.  One must assume that someone within the organization has actually seen the document that we’re supposed to believe is 50,000 pages long.  (Let’s see.  I have a 500-page ream of paper on my desk right now.  Just eyeballing it, I’d say it’s about an inch or so thick.  Has anyone seen a Fed-Ex guy with an 8-foot stack of paper enter the Saints facility?) 

We haven’t seen that evidence, and judging from this scrupulous league office’s history, there are a dozen interns shoveling paperwork into a burn pit at a pace that would make State Farm executives blush so that we never will.  We’re told that there are emails, and some game notes, and, uh, well, 49,901 more pages of very damning stuff, or something.

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Football fans, the Media, and the Asch Paradigm

26 Mar
 

Ever heard of Solomon Asch?  He was a big football fan, and he studied people who hated “bounty” systems and believed what ESPN told them.  Ok, ok, not really.  But he would have studied them, believe that.

 
Asch was a scientist from Poland who did some pretty amazing studies on group conformity in the 1950s.  They were ridiculously simple, but they were eye-opening, especially to a bunch of zombie football fans who weren’t even born yet.  Calm down, I’m getting to it, just follow me for a minute.
 
He created these little drawings of lines.  One had a single line.   The next had three lines, one of which was exactly the same length as the line in the first picture.  And he asked a bunch of people to compare the two and decide which line was the same length. 
 
But here’s where it gets tricky.  He embedded the experimentees in groups of 6 or 8 or so people, but he didn’t tell the single study participant that the rest of the subjects were informed plants.  Asch had instructed them to unanimously choose the wrong line 12 out of 18 times.  They didn’t start until the third “test”, and the person under study was one of the last to answer.

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