[the 'stache]

Roger and Bob. Thick as thieves? You be the judge.

Spygate to Deflategate: Inside what split the NFL and Patriots apart

I am certainly not a fan of ESPN, as I feel they have become, in general, hack sports journalists. But occasionally, their reporters do an article that just blows you away. This is one such piece. ESPN just dropped a bomb, and the fallout is going to be massive.

It now seems Roger Goodell's hyper-aggressive pursuit of Tom Brady vis a vis Deflategate was actually his attempt to save face with the other 31 NFL owners after his botched handling of Spygate. The four game suspension levied on Tom Brady was meant to be a form of retroactive punishment for the team. We know that evidence collected by the NFL during their first investigation of the Patriots was destroyed by Goodell. But now, it seems, we know why: ESPN's article accuses Goodell of being in collusion with Patriots owner Robert Kraft, and Head Coach Bill Belichick. The Commissioner and the NFL knowingly swept Spygate under the rug.

Goodell tried to assuage his bosses: He ordered the destruction of the tapes and notes, he insisted, so they couldn't be exploited again. Many in the room didn't believe it. And some would conclude it was as if Goodell, Kraft and Belichick had acted like partners, complicit in trying to sweep the scandal's details under the rug while the rest of the league was left wondering how much glory the Patriots' cheating had cost their teams. "Goodell didn't want anybody to know that his gold franchise had won Super Bowls by cheating," a senior executive whose team lost to the Patriots in a Super Bowl now says.

It appears that these accusations are well substantiated.

Interviews by ESPN The Magazine and Outside the Lines with more than 90 league officials, owners, team executives and coaches, current and former Patriots coaches, staffers and players, and reviews of previously undisclosed private notes from key meetings, show that Spygate is the centerpiece of a long, secret history between Goodell's NFL, which declined comment for this story, and Kraft's Patriots. The diametrically opposed way the inquiries were managed by Goodell -- and, more importantly, perceived by his bosses -- reveals much about how and why NFL punishment is often dispensed. The widespread perception that Goodell gave the Patriots a break on Spygate, followed by the NFL's stonewalling of a potential congressional investigation into the matter, shaped owners' expectations of what needed to be done by 345 Park Ave. on Deflategate.

It was, one owner says, time for "a makeup call."

Worst of all, there is much more to Spygate than has ever been public knowledge...until now.

Goodell had imposed a $500,000 fine on Belichick, a $250,000 fine on the team and the loss of a first-round draft pick just four days after league security officials had caught the Patriots and before he'd even sent a team of investigators to Foxborough, Massachusetts. Those investigators hadn't come up empty: Inside a room accessible only to Belichick and a few others, they found a library of scouting material containing videotapes of opponents' signals, with detailed notes matching signals to plays for many teams going back seven seasons. Among them were handwritten diagrams of the defensive signals of the Pittsburgh Steelers, including the notes used in the January 2002 AFC Championship Game won by the Patriots 24-17. Yet almost as quickly as the tapes and notes were found, they were destroyed, on Goodell's orders: League executives stomped the tapes into pieces and shredded the papers inside a Gillette Stadium conference room.

What happens from here? I don't know how Roger Goodell could possibly keep his position as NFL Commissioner.

As Rachel Maddow is so fond of saying, "Watch this space."