TheOak

Since someone else touched upon this in a thread I figured I could lay out my conspiracy theory and at least one person wouldn't think I am batsh1t crazy.

I will lay out some structure.

Rank and file for the NFL:
Owners (34) Two teams are co-owned (Raiders/Giants) and Green Bay Packers Inc. (363,491 stockholders) owns the Packers (Owners collectively referred to as the "NFL Shield" for the rest of this)
Godedell - Meat puppet for Owners. Protector of the Shield (Owners interest)
Coaches - I think players and coaches are on equal levels because the NFLPA is stronger than the NFLCA
Players - Enployees / Salesmen

Reasons 95% of the owners own a team:
Make Money - These are businessmen.

Largest item threatening the NFL Shield:
As of 2 September 2012, there are roughly 140 individual lawsuits brought on behalf of over 3,300 former NFL players.

What does the NFL Shield have to rebut those lawsuits:
Until 21 March 2012, nothing... Then they perused a systemic Bounty program.

Whats to gain or lose from perusing or not Bounty punishment:
To recognize NFL bounties in realistic terms, is to admit bounties are a systemic part of the NFL for decades. It also means that the NFL Shield has no plausible "we have taken reasonable actions to protect our players", in a courtroom to defend against the Concussion Suits. To pursue it gives them "reasonable" actions taken.

What Does the NFL Shield risk with bounty gate? A black eye.
What Does the NFL Shield risk not pursuing bounty gate? Being destroyed by law suits.

Who gets hurt due to Bounty Gate? 4 members of management of 1 team, 4 players, and the fans of 1 of 32 franchises. Also a commissioner who understands his place as meat shield has his name drug through the dirt because he is inept.

So now I have laid out the risk reward. Doing nothing risks the entire league and 32 franchises. Pursuing it is minimal damage.

The Select Players Punished: (out of supposedly more than 20 Saints/ probably hundreds in the league)
Vilma - 8 year veteran near end of career and has been accused of Bounty before.
Smith - 9 year veteran near end of career.
Fujita - 11 year veteran near end of career, and heralded for his integrity.
Hargrove - 8 year veteran near end of his career, the man that was caught on tape wanting his money but later proven to have not been that guy. He is still tangled up in this because he lied.

Lay suits by these players for lost wages if the truth ever came out would be minimal as not many of them have much of a career left.

The Juicy Conspiracy Theory:
In an effort to save his Empire from law suits (lets face it, season ticket sales have not dropped off, and I doubt the sales of Saint's merchandise will be off for more than one season) Tom Benson not only knew about Bounty Gate before it came down, but was part of the reason it happened. He allowed it, he ushered it, and he sits back quietly watching it happen to protect his investment in court.

Not possible you say? This is the same man that wanted to move the team to San Antonio for "business reasons".

A few questions for you to think about before you reply:

1. What owner of a company (Saints) would allow an employee (Goodell) punish him? Unless he was OK with it?

2. If the owners had no hand in this and no buy in, do you think Jerry Jones would let the Dallas Cowboys get massacred in the media like this as Benson has?

3. Which team in the NFL has the most loyal fans that have endured the most losing seasons, hurricanes, team almost moved, yet STILL remain loyal?

4. Which team with those fans could be publicly massacred with out scaring the precious chosen teams that the NFL adores?

So we as fans have fallen for the plan. The plan was to protect the NFL Shield in court, Goodell is the scape goat for the owners and would weather all of the hate and blame.

The NFL shield is protecting its multibillion dollar empire, by crippling one franchise on the field for only one season.

Starting 2013, the Saints will have recovered, ticket and merchandise sales will have recovered, All Players and Coaches will be back, and the NFL has something they can use in court to protect its multibillion dollar empire against concussion lawsuits.

Quite possibly the soundest business plan ever put together to protect an Empire. Hate on Goodell... nahh he is just a pupet with a lot of hands up his azz. Benson is the man that should be taken to task for allowing all of this. And if Benson is not the man and a part of all of this.. SHAME on him for getting fat watching it.

SmashMouth

Are you also suggesting we may have won a Super Bowl as a form of payment for such a deviously contrived plan?

CharityMike

You know I'm with ya. Benson is way to quiet about all of this. This is all part of the plan which is why I hope Vilma keeps at it because if he is successful, it negates what they are trying to do.

Let's face it, if our damn organization wasn't so sloppy, this could be happening to another team. We made it easy pickens.

TheOak

Nope, not at all. Since the plan didn't gain any of its evidence until we were already in the play offs. We won the Super Bowl out right...

We also with no small part going to Williams and a guy with a camera in the locker room served it up on a silver platter.

It is interesting that 2009 was the year we were supposedly notified to stop the bounties (as if we were the only team), and the year the NFL had to defend its policies on concussions in front of congress.

I always go back to this. IF the NFL wanted ALL bounties to stop, they would have released a public statement to ALL 32 teams telling them to stop, and there would be zero tolerance after that statement.

But they didn't want them all to stop, not until they had someone to be sacrificed in the name of bounties... so they supposedly memo'd 1 team.... Looking for the goat.

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.

TheOak

The warning from the League was given to the saints in 2009.

The Vikings game was in 2010.

It did not come from the 2010 Championship game.

SaintsBro

You sure on that? It definitely came from the 2010 Championship game, have you got a link that shows otherwise?

This thread says investigation started in 2010:
http://blackandgold.com/saints/43112...-timeline.html

New York Times:

"In case you need a timeline of this whole bizarre case:

March 2: N.F.L. announces investigation into potential bounty program by Saints, first reported to the league by an anonymous player in 2010 and, the league says, corroborated with more evidence in 2011.


Wikipedia:
"The NFL began investigating the Saints in 2010 in response to allegations of deliberate attempts to injure players during the 2009–10 playoffs, but the investigation stalled until late in the 2011 season. blah blah blah"

I have seen nothing that said the league investigated bounties on the Saints in 2009.

neugey

The weird thing is ... the NFL is the one that made a big stink about Bountygate and bounty systems!

I doubt any of the former players or their attorney really had this on their radar at all until the NFL went all nuts and public about it, calling out the Saints. Why didn't the NFL just keep it under the rug, what little impact the any alleged or attempted bounties actually had? It's just a desperation PR attempt by the NFL to hopefully get a jury member or two to vote in their favor, even though most of the lawsuits will involve players that never played for the Saints or whose medical conditions who have nothing to do with bounties.

Now we can see this tactic will backfire, and the owners just need to man up and give more medical compensation to former NFL players before it gets any more expensive for them. Other corporations have survived litigation and so can the NFL. I wish the NFL would just take it on the chin rather than playing gymnastics with the justice system.

And hmmm now that I think about it ... all these bounty cases will take a lot of time to sort out and their lawyers will probably claim the bounty cases need to be resolved before player injury trials can resume. So perhaps it's merely a stalling tactic.

saintfan

And the thing is, regardless, ultimately that's exactly what's going to happen. The NFL will surely have to 'take it on the chin' as you suggest. That is a virtual certainty. There is simply too much evidence against it - Roger's appearance before Congress with the NFL doctor included. It's a desperate attempt that WILL fail.

Beastmode

x626, that still does not explain Benson hiring Freech's high dollar investigative firm to get to the bottom of it. Are you saying this was a front as well? I personally think Benson is a small fry in terms of the owners. A lot of his loyalties are either dead or were pushed out years ago. I do agree though with the Saints being a prime candidate for this punishment. We are without question the loyalists fans in the NFL. Win or lose, we really just want to be entertained and have a good time. This isn't the case with most teams. Losing in epic fashion is just a part of La culture as Monday Red Beans and Rice.