[bedir than average]

Questions Linger About Why N.F.L. Destroyed Patriots’ Tapes - New York Times

The N.F.L. later clarified that the penalty was for the Patriots’ “totality of conduct” and not only for their actions against the Jets. The league never explained what totality of conduct meant. Presumably, the evidence was on the tapes.

Questions remain: How many tapes showed evidence of cheating? In what games? In the playoffs? In the Super Bowl? By other teams?

The Jets (3-10) and the Patriots (13-0), who will meet Sunday in Foxborough, Mass., declined to comment last week, referring to the matter as a “league issue.” The N.F.L. spokesman Greg Aiello wrote in an e-mail message, “We’ve addressed this matter, and we’re not going to readdress it this week.”

Greg Wilson, a crisis counselor and senior vice president at Levick Strategic Communications in Washington, said: “They’re rolling the dice that the whole thing is just going to go away. And here’s the thing — a lot of this could be avoided.”

Wilson sees a crisis that requires managing, a “clear-cut case of all the parties needing to rip off the Band-Aid as soon as possible.” The goal of managing any crisis, he said, is to acknowledge the black eye and compress the time it lasts.

By destroying the tapes they continue to damage their own credibility. When they reference that the penalty was due to more than just the Jets game, we know for certain that something bigger happened.

There is a stain on the Patriots reputation, and now the NFL will make it impossible to be removed.