The NFL required the Patriots to submit all videotapes (from the Jets game and anyt other game in which they had violated the taping rules) to the league office. Within days of receiving the tapes, the NFL destroyed all of the tapes. Why? Why destroy the tapes unless something damaging, such as tapes of playoff and Superbowl opponents, was on them? That is a question that is leading to a bit of a scandal, and quite possibly a full-blown crisis for the NFL.
Every business, and make not mistake, the NFL is a business, will encounter crisis at some point. Many are handled well (Tylenol), many are not (Firestone). Crisis consultants are available to guide businesses through crisis situations, minimizing the damage and helping the firms move past the the crisis as soon as possible.
The New York Times has an outstanding article regarding this NFL scandal that includes comments from crisis management experts. Here are some excerpts:
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.
Wilson says the American public generally wants to hear what he calls the Big Three of crisis management: I am sorry. I take responsibility. And I will fix it.
He recommended that the league respond with more transparency, explaining in detail what the tapes contained and why they were destroyed.
“When you destroy evidence, most people assume guilt,” Wilson said. “The N.F.L. is cashing in on its trust bank. They can weather the storm, but they are stringing it out longer than most companies or people can afford to.”
Tortorella points to the N.B.A. in comparison. When the referee scandal surfaced earlier this year, Commissioner David Stern went on national television and gave a sincere-sounding apology. In these different reactions, Tortorella said the N.B.A. came down on its crisis like a “ton of bricks” — the N.F.L. like a “ton of feathers.”
“Roger Goodell learned what Richard Nixon did not,” Tortorella said. “If the tapes are destroyed, you keep your job.”
The N.F.L. said the Patriots signed a statement that the league was in possession of the only copies of the evidence, all of which have been destroyed. Tortorella said they should not be so sure.
“That might come back to haunt them,” he said. “I know this: nobody ever makes one Xerox copy. Nobody ever makes one tape. Nobody ever makes one set of anything. Based on that, I’m not sure this crisis is over yet.”
Tortorella said what surprised him most was how little scrutiny resulted from the destruction of the tapes. (Gregg Easterbrook of espn.com looked into the issue in September.)
Tortorella said between Spygate and the Michael Vick dogfighting case — a crisis that experts said Goodell managed superbly — “the league gets two black eyes, but neither belongs to him.” Wilson dismissed the Vick scandal as an N.F.L. crisis, but added to the list the health problems retired players are experiencing.
“The problem is the Patriots keep winning,” Wilson said. “That is both a blessing and a curse. By winning, they are vindicating themselves, showing this whole Spygate thing did not matter. But they are also shining a spotlight, over and over again, on what happened earlier this season.
“Spygate will be the biggest story if they win the Super Bowl.”
The Patriots’ perfect season so far, and the taping controversy, have made football fans only care more about the team, said David Carter, the executive director of the Sports Business Institute at the University of Southern California.
“Love them or hate them, you care,” Carter said. “Some people think they represent everything wrong with sports. The N.F.L. walks a fine line here. A certain amount of controversy is helpful. But if it looks like they are not coming down hard enough, they undermine the very credibility they are hoping to promote.”
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