The Asterisk: A Fan's Grievance On Cheating And Rule Manipulation In The NFL

By Vern Nicholson

‘THE ASTERISK’

The NFL’s affirmative action to protect less athletic and immobile quarterbacks over decades has resulted in a ripple effect of change to every defensive position on the field. Dominant athletes have had to conform to greater subjective on-field enforcement or face massive fines.

The Asterisk uses comparison analysis, player statistics, and first-hand sources to give compelling insight on the more than two decade’s worth of cheating and rule manipulation that precipitated a spillover of success for the New England Patriots in today's NFL.

The Asterisk is a fact-based analysis that highlights the unscrupulous factors elevating the Patriots to so-called G.O.A.T. status:

- The manipulation of rules to protect less athletic quarterbacks in the NFL for decades
- Massive cheating by the patriots over the better part of a decade and the eventual cover-up
- Rules that are biased against more mobile quarterbacks who are endangered on the field

The Author takes you on a riveting journey on the history of the NFL and gives the reader stunning truths about the nefarious factors that has propelled the Patriots to dominance in the League.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vern Nicholson
• Release date: Sep 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781732593848

Vern Nicholson

Vern Nicholson is a lifelong fan of professional football who believes we all need to have a conversation about the legitimacy of the Patriots’ success over the past two decades. Thus: The Asterisk. Vern has been a small business owner and marketing executive and has lived in New Hampshire for over 15 years. He authored the Digital Marketing guide, Farming A Marketing Explosion, and develops successful marketing campaigns for small businesses across the country.

Book preview

Dedication

To my grandma, Ruby and brother, Jame. An ounce of the kindness and compassion you both possessed would be a crowning achievement in this lifetime.

Epigraph

Morally, the life of the organization must be of exemplary nature. This is one phase where the organization must not have criticism.

— Vince Lombardi

CONTENTS

Dedication

Epigraph

CONTENTS

Preface

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

A Fan’s Grievance

Prologue

1

ROGER GOODELL’S LEADERSHIP

2

NFL’S AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

3

SUPER BOWL LI

4

STEEL COMPARISON

5

NIGHTMARE ON DECEMBER 17TH

6

SPYGATE AND DEFLATEGATE

7

IN THE NAME OF SAFETY

8

NFL REORDER OF THINGS

9

DROP-BACK VS ZONE-READ PASSERS

10

THE GOAT FANTASY & THE LITTLE ASTERISK

11

FAN BASE ARGUMENTS

12

SOLUTIONS FOR THE DAMAGE DONE

Appendix

About the Author

Preface

S:\Downloads\nfl-logo2-01.jpg

A

young college graduate penned a letter to his father, a die-hard Patriots’ fan and season ticket holder, saying, The only thing I want to do in life, other than to be the commissioner of the NFL, is to make you proud.1 The son made good on his desire to be NFL Commissioner. Unfortunately, his father, the late US Senator Charles Goodell, didn’t have an opportunity to witness his son at the pinnacle of success.

S:\Downloads\goodellfamily08102018.jpg

It took bold and visionary leadership for Senator Goodell to buck his party’s stance on the brutal war in Vietnam. This leaves one to wonder, if a fraction of the senior Goodell’s leadership was on display during some of professional football’s recent controversies would it have changed the prevailing opinion that there is a leadership question in The Commish’s office? How does the son, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, measure up to a father whose legacy and leadership is without question? What signature and enduring act of leadership can we attribute to Roger Goodell’s reign over one of the most popular sports in the country? One can only wonder how Goodell processes the New England Patriots’ enormous, two-decades-long, successful run while weighing whether he’s keeping his promise to make his father proud.

***

When Tex Schramm, an innovative genius who ushered in the technical advances of professional football, stated in 1985 that he could not imagine that the NFL Rules Committee could do any more to protect a quarterback, I’m certain he couldn’t have envisioned the quarterback position’s evolution and what it’s become today.

Decades of rule changes to protect the quarterback position, and cheating throughout the last twenty years, has produced a spillover of success for less athletic drop-back quarterbacks on the field of play. The sport I loved as a child continues to evolve, but today it is skirting the boundaries between legitimate sport and entertainment spectacle.

The NFL, under Roger Goodell’s leadership, has continued to place enormous restrictions on defenses through rule manipulation, and the threat of massive fines and on-field enforcement. These have given enormous leeway to officials who subjectively penalize a player’s intent during on-field performance. The result: gross inequities for teams competing against the Tom Brady and Bill Belichick quarterback/coach duo, and a ripple of change to every defensive position on the field.

Teams were disadvantaged as a result of rule manipulation done ostensibly to make the sport more profitable. The League artificially orchestrated more points on the board, by unfairly protecting athletically challenged quarterbacks who found it difficult to maneuver on the field of play. And the team who benefited the most from this artificially created ecosystem engaged in a decade’s worth of misconduct—tampering with opposing team communications; and petitioning the League to change the rules maintaining footballs for the purpose of making it virtually impossible to fumble, especially in the adverse weather conditions of New England, Buffalo, and in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

Teams were also severely limited by one team’s elaborate scheme to cheat opponents by cataloging and filming opponents’ immensely valuable, and secret, pregame walk-throughs and hand signals. The NFL Commissioner was complicit in the cover up when evidence of this cheating began to surface.

The Asterisk seeks to give more depth and meaning by portraying a fan’s perspective of the state of professional football in America. The information that resides on these pages has not been presented to halt the coronation of the New England Patriots’ perceived or real successes as a professional sports franchise. Rather it challenges the reader to engage in critical thought about outside factors that contributed to the Patriots’ success.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

S:\Downloads\nfl-logo2-01.jpg

Writing is a remarkable expression of human thought. I was astonished by the fluidity with which I was able to organize my thinking around a subject that I am very passionate about. My God continues to Bless me with a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over. I give thanks for all that He allows me to achieve through His unyielding Grace.

The intense focus during critical points in writing this book has inevitably required alone time away from Family. I want to express my thanks to my wife Lisa, my oldest daughter Tamara, son Julian and daughters Elizabeth and Lena (BeansRubyMaeMackatackaracksters) for your unselfishness, patience and allowing me to be devoted to this project.

So many of the words on the pages of this book were written in a vortex of ideas, so it was comforting to be able to bounce some of those ideas off close friends over 10 years, Terry and Barbara, my neighbors and retired educators.

My good friend and golfing buddy, the late Perry, not only put up with my atrocious play at The Oaks Golf Club over the years, he also entertained my blunt thoughts about the team he loved. Perry was a great Alpine Skier, perhaps one of the greatest this country has produced. (Nastar Hall of Fame ‘The Achiever’: http://www.theasterisk.us/perry_bryant). I thank him as I remember he was the very first person with whom I shared my desire to write this book.

I also continue to gain inspiration from the remarkable achievements of many family and friends across the country.

INTRODUCTION

A Fan’s Grievance

S:\Downloads\nfl-logo2-01.jpg

It is not easy to live in New England and pretend I don’t know what is so blatantly true.

– Vern Nicholson

G

rowing up in ERIE, a manufacturing town in Northwestern Pennsylvania shaped my views about how professional football should be played. Intrinsically I seek to discover and ask questions about the sport that I love, and in my attempt to seek answers about the transformation of professional football over the last decade I have chronicled the issue. Yes. The Issue. This issue is pertinent to all fans I think, especially those who watched the sport before the Roger Goodell era, as well as the many people who questioned the rise of the New England Patriots’ dominance in the NFL.

After reading this book you might find it odd that the Patriots were my second favorite team when I moved to New England in the spring of 1999. It wasn’t until after I was hired at a lodging research company in Portsmouth, New Hampshire that my admiration for the Patriots’ on-field heroics evaporated. I discovered that I had been fooled by a mirage. The President and owner of the lodging-research company and his five sons were all diehard Patriots fans (one lone Dallas Cowboys devotee among them) so I got chided when my beloved Steelers lost in crucial playoff games. On top of this I had to contend with the extreme subjectivity of New England sports writers and reporters.

I started comparing the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers dynasty with the Patriots recent dominance and came away disgusted by what my research revealed.

Not in the history of the NFL have there been more disparate franchise cultures. There can’t be two franchise cultures that feature more opposite strategies for winning. I delved more into both team’s histories only to discover two starkly different recipes for achieving the ultimate prize—that is: Super Bowl victories. The New England Patriots are second to the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl wins, but of late they’ve repeatedly beat the Steelers and other teams en route to their numerous Super Bowl victories in the 2000s.

I am outlining my grievance at the most opportune time, since both Bill Belichick’s and Tom Brady’s careers are coming to a close. This book spells out how Belichick, Brady, and the Patriots organization are the direct beneficiaries of the National Football League’s assault on athleticism, and beneficiaries of rule manipulation. This book also spells out the Patriots’ part in elaborate cheating schemes in the NFL.

Some will make the case that Goodell’s safety initiative targeted Black players and were intended to enhance the performance of White players like Brady, but this is not a book about race. This is a book about the downward spiral of the NFL. This is a book about a National Football League where less-than-athletic players are elevated above truly athletic players in the game I grew up enjoying all of my life. I am disinclined to delve into the issue of race in professional football. While one could deduce that Roger Goodell’s motives for deemphasizing athleticism in the NFL were racially motivated, when I use the term Affirmative Action it has nothing to do with race. I am talking about policies instituted by the NFL to minimize the great talents of people of all backgrounds.

Race is too broad of a subject. Since many true athletes, throughout the history of the NFL, have come in all colors, and from many different ethnic backgrounds, it would be inappropriate to single out any specific ethnic group. My experience has been that the question of race is an attempt to ignite and inflame issues—to make them controversial merely for the sake of controversy. Many of the hard questions raised in the book would be lost were we to over-generalize, or to attempt to use race as a proxy for athleticism.

Unfortunately time will not allow me to chronicle every NFL franchise executive, coach, player and fan who has articulated their view of what the proverbial asterisk has meant to the game, but I attempt to raise some of their concerns, as they relate to the topics in this book.

Many people have acquiesced to Goodell’s artificially imposed standard of greatness while failing to question whether it is ethical. This book seeks to raise the question out of a sense of duty to the game, and to great athletes from the past, the present, as well as those who will represent the future of the sport.

What I spell out in these pages is relevant to fans who watch, as well as those who aspire to play the sport—at any level. The NFL’s rule changes over the last decade, and the recent, infamous NFL cheating scandals deserve to be properly contextualized.

It is not easy to live in New England and pretend I don’t know what is so blatantly true. My social media timelines are continuously filled with Brady deification posts. During Deflategate, even the smallest contradiction of Patriots’ fans arguments, invited immediate attack. It didn’t matter if the contradiction amounted to objective truth.

This book is about five years in the making. After heated workplace arguments (even to the point of exchanging blows) I realized a book would give me a better platform to air what the major broadcast networks have been reluctant to. Writing this book has also been beneficial to me. It provided a mental release a way to square the deception—a deception