LivnaLieTimay

New allegations against Saints must be investigated | ProFootballTalk

Florio very critical of ESPN for releasing this story with no facts. When John Barr went on Mike and Mike this morning the guy gives no facts asks more questions than he answers. If you're going to backtrack, why report it in the first place? Unfortunately, I feel like just by reporting this story the damage has already been done. Pretty clear that ESPN has an axe to grind with the Saints and they'll do whatever they can to make us look bad.

NuNu318

If FLORIO has a problem with this story YOU KNOW something is wrong. I'm to the point now where I'm like F*** it....let them hate, let them throw out accusations without of shred of proof because it benifits their agenda. The court of public opinion doesn't mean anything to me when it comes to MY team. they can say and think what they want and WE WILL KEEP WINNING!! Hate just fuels the fire. We play very well with our backs against the wall and right now our backs have been forced THROUGH the wall by Goodell and the media.

pumpkindriver

Its a typical Saul Alinksky tactic, commonly used by the left wing progressives, make false allegations against your enemy and force them to spend time , effort and money to prove their innocence in the media. The Mainstream media is well known for doing this and ESPN has hopped right up on the bandwagon with them. Like they say , "Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story".

W. Kovacs

Don't want to start a political discussion here since it's not the place for it. But, as a liberal, I can't sit idly by and not point out that this tactic is used by conservatives. (Death Panels in Health Care Bill, Obama's Birth Certificate, etc.)

SloMotion

Well, let's put it this way ... it's the typical "just-get-it-out-there, whip up the masses and convict 'em in the court of public opinion before all the facts are known and worry about the consequences later" strategy ... this stuff just irks me, and yeah, if Florio won't touch it, it's got to be BS.

darstep

What's the frequency used on those Motorolla head-sets?
How much money will the league waste on network security and wireless surveys
across all 32 sites? and air marshalls scanning for signal thieves in the stands?
Please wipe, and just flush this thing. Jiggle the handle so we're ready for the next load.

xan

Not to digress, but ESPN's tactic is not derived from Saul Alinsky, as anyone who is familiar with history would know. The tactic is also known as "red baiting", "witch hunting" or "McCarthyism", making unfounded allegations against an individual in which disproving the negative is nearly impossible. Alinsky worked within the system, exposing verifiable facts.

If you're going to wail against injustice, wail correctly.

xan

What would constitute "evidence?"

W. Kovacs

THIS is a great question. By the accuser's own description, the device was disabled after the '04 season. Unless there's video of it being installed or unless there are still lines running to the opposing sidelines that just aren't connected any more, how in the world is this supposed to be proven?

On the flip side, and to Pumpkindriver's original point, it also can't be DISproven. How do you prove something didn't exist 7 years ago?

WhoDat!656

If Saints G.M. Mickey Loomis truly used an eavesdropping system to listen to communications involving opposing coaches from 2002 through 2004, one of the teams whose communications would have been intercepted was the Dallas Cowboys, in 2003.

And Saints coach Sean Payton was a member of the Dallas coaching staff in 2003.

Specifically, Payton was the assistant head coach/quarterbacks coach. He coached from the sidelines, not the booth, so anything he was saying to the guys upstairs and anything they were saying to him could have been intercepted.

Again, this assumes that the allegations that Loomis had a system for listening are true. (No one has alleged yet that Loomis actually used the system.)

If it happened, maybe Payton wasn’t really a victim. Maybe Loomis was listening to get an idea of the guys who could and couldn’t perform well under duress — and maybe Loomis liked enough what he heard to put Payton in play to become the next head coach of the Saints, in 2006.

Frankly, that explanation makes a lot more sense that the notion that Loomis was, within the 40 seconds before the snap, listening to what was being said by the opposing coaches, making sense of what it meant, and then communicating that information to someone on the coaching staff who would interpret it and relay it to the coaches on the sidelines and then the players on the field in whatever time remained until the ball was hiked.

If Mickey Loomis eavesdropped, Sean Payton may have been one of the victims | ProFootballTalk

"A Veteran is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to "The United States of America" for an amount of "up to and including my life."