Commissioner Goodell fined Bill Belechick a half a million dollars. He fined the Patriots a quarter mill and the loss of one or two future draft picks. After this came down, Bill Belechick held a "press conference."
He must've said 20 or more times, "it's in the past." He batted back every question on the subject with the response: "it's in the past. We've been fined. It's over with." All he would talk about is the next game, the next team.
Well, Bill, there are thousands of Patriot fans and hundreds of thousands of fans around the country who respect what you've accomplished FOR WHOM IT IS NOT IN THE PAST. For this sizeable group of people, it is very much still in the present.
Some of us would like to know:
1) What exactly did you do?
2) How long have you've been doing it?
3) How has it benefited your team?
One of the biggest problems with the steroid situation is the MYSTERY it creates for millions of sports fans. I, for one, would like to know:
Who took what?
How did it benefit them?
How many revered baseball records have been tarnished?
Did the use of performance enhancing drugs affect who made (or didn't make) the playoffs?
Did it affect the World Series?
If you're writing a suspense novel, then I'm all for a good mystery. But not knowing how your sport has been negatively impacted by unethical conduct, well, that's not a mystery any of us enjoy.
In my next post, I'll provide a copy of a letter I sent to Commission Bud Selig that offered a way out of the whole steroid scene. And a way to end the mystery in a way that would benefit everyone.
For now and for this post, I simply want to tell Bill Belechick this: I guess you have the right to withhold from the public what you did, but many of us out here do not appreciate that stance. Watching your players circle the wagons or knowing some of your closest fans have a deaf ear to what you did — well, that doesn't cut it for the vast majority of us out here.
We care about sports well beyond the mega amounts of money involved. And we'd like to have a bit of truth now and then to dispel the clouds of suspicion and mystery that can degrade the respect and enjoyment of the game.
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