SaintsBro

Well, the investigation of the Saints clearly came out of that NFC Championship game, and out of the Vikings/Childress and their fans complaining and whining and mewling about it, after the fact. If they didn't whine and complain about it so much, nobody would be talking about this at all today. If this supposed "bounty" stuff happened in a game of Cleveland vs. Jacksonville, and was a "bounty" somebody had on Brady Quinn or Todd Bouman in 2009, no one would even freaking care. The punishment would be minimal, some lumps would be taken, small announcement, and the story would be OVER.

It's not very hard to see that the Saints weren't supposed to win that game, that the Saints in the Super Bowl was not the outcome "they" -- meaning not just Goodell, or the NFL "shield", but also the big media and the network and "the fans" and frankly most of the world -- wanted to see. That's when all the trouble started. To me, that's the Juicy Conspiracy Theory that keeps sticking its ugly head up, no matter how people try and beat it back, or label it as Tin Foil Hat, or say it's Paranoia or "Saints fans are crazy" or whatever. Again and again, in every memo and public statement, Goodell and the whole bounty thing is ludicrously focused on Favre and that NFC Championship game, it is kind of obvious and not subtle at all. The rest of the evidence is basically just window dressing to point back to that game.

They even changed the rules of playoff overtime for the first time since 1941, the following spring, as quick as they could, just because the Saints won that game. No other plausible reason for it. Changing the overtime rules = them openly saying, they think the outcome of that game was incorrect. That was the rules of the game and they didn't like how it turned out. So this way in their minds they can retro actively give the ball back to Favre one more time, and he scores a TD instead of throwing a pick, and then it's Favre vs. Manning, the game "everybody" wanted to see.

They even rigged and engineered the vote with the owners, on the rule change, so that they knew they had enough votes to pass it, then let the Vikings switch and vote against it, so as to save face.