ESPN is approaching this story from an interesting angle:

I’m not arguing anything or criticizing anybody. Just telling you that if you want to know if something is actually going to harm a Republican, go see what Fox News/Breitbart/etc are saying about it.

Front page of Fox News right now is: “Report alleging Carson lied about West Point called into question.”

Well, whether I said I was or wasn’t, you’d still be left trusting/not trusting a stranger on the internet. So not much point to that. But you don’t have to be a medical doctor to point out that some aspects of a story don’t add up. I’m not prescribing meds or making a diagnosis. Anyone studying/working in…

I don’t know his history, but right off the bat there are some problems here. Depakote is used to treat seizures. Wellbutrin is “softer” than a lot of anti-depressants, but one of the best-known side effects is that it can lead to seizures.

The person who wrote that site never should’ve “rated” anything. All the site had to do to serve its purpose was list the various rules violations various teams committed.

For the first, you’re dealing with cultural relativism. For the second, not allowing new revelations to alter your memories of enjoying Cosby is very different from Hardy.

A judge found him guilty and sentenced him to 18 months probation. Hardy appealed. Hardy then settled with the accuser, and she stopped cooperating with the prosecution. So the case was dropped.

The issue with the headset stuff, I think, it simply that they have countless signals being broadcast around the stadium. You have radio crews, tv crews, team camera crews (ha), NFL camera crews, offensive coaches on one channel, defensive coaches on another channel, refs making broadcasts, every fan on a cell phone,…

Wait, what? Who said anything about fabricating the existence of anything?

Except...Don Van Natta was on Bill Simmons’ podcast in December. Spygate was brought up. Simmons said he was never really comfortable with how the NFL destroyed the evidence. He said it was “fishy.” This was Van Natta’s response:

I seem to remember the Spurs being accused of sabotaging the air conditioning, making the opponents’ showers cold, putting snakes and flies in the opponents’ locker room, etc. Nobody cared. But that’s different from accusations never having been made.

Even if you think the Patriots are evil incarnate and guilty of even more than they’ve been accused, I don’t think you have to be a conspiracy theorist to think a lot of people at ESPN tow the NFL line. Or maybe ESPN just has people that the NFL knows can be used as puppets. (Even allowing that the Patriots cheated,…

Yes. If only the most vocal Patriots fans were as erudite as the most vocal fans of other NFL teams...

Well gee...thanks for allowing that I “may actually be right.”

You’ve touched on the most frustrating thing about all of this. The NFL often does not understand their own rule book!

I’m sorry, but you’re just incorrect about this. These old rulebooks are available! The part about “accessible to club staff members during the game” was never in the rules. This was a falsehood actually first uttered by the NFL though. So I don’t really blame you for having it wrong.

Have you ever actually gone back and looked at the rules? You can find some pdf’s on the NFL site, but you might have to dig a little. I wouldn’t normally nitpick commenters like this, but people will likely look to you as sort of an authority on all of this. And you’re simply wrong.