The Green Bay Packers have filed tampering charges with the NFL front offices against the Minnesota Vikings for inappropriate discussions with Brett Favre.
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3493559So the NFL doesn't want to talk about it at all.
That seems funny because within 24 hrs after the Jet's confiscating the tape, the league said there would be an investigation and hinted at punishment of lost draft picks if there was something to it.
The Patriots, of course, were penalized $250,000 and a 1st round pick and Belichick $500,000 for basically doing something that gave them little to no advantage in the game and would have been legal had they done the exact same thing only from the area of a league mandated enclosed box area.
The Chicago Bears filed tampering charges against the San Francisco 49ers and the Niners were found guilty of talking with Lance Briggs agent while legalling not having the ability to do so. Briggs resigned with the Bears. So apparently their tampering had as much on field effect as the Pat's videotaping.
The Niners were penalized with a whopping 5th round draft pick and switching picks with the Bears in the third round.
Now if Minny actually did tamper with Favre which has led to all of this turmoil going on in the Packers organization will Minny be penalized more along the lines of new England or San Francisco or somewhere in between.
I happen to think that of the three offenses, that Minnesota's, if found guilty, is the most egregious. The have tampered with, even though he has retired, with a team's starting QB that last year threw for over 4100 yards, threw 28 TDs with only 15 INTs and had a QB rating of 95.5. That doesn't even include the fact that he is one of that team's all time icons and still had a chance to return as that team's QB, no matter what the Packers said behind the scenes.
If another team tampered with Peyton Manning, or Tom Brady, or Tony Romo, or even Eli Manning I would expect the league to drop the hammer on that franchise.
let's see if the commish is truly a heavy handed judge and jury or if he just decided to make a very expensive example of the league's premeir team. If the NFL doesn't fine Minnesota to at least the extent of the Patriots, I will be leading an area wide email and fax and letter complaint campaign into the league offices staing they had an obvious and blatant bias against the Pats and call for the ouster of Goodell based on a lack of impartiality.
It won't do any good but if I can get some pub so that people realize how wronged the Pats were, I will be happy.