re: Did Tom Benson sign off on Roger's NFL extension?

I had a customer of mine a couple years back that played in the NFL during the bounty gate time. I would compare him to a Kelemete type player. He played 4-5 years but was never a full time starter, never played for the Saints. During 2012 season he made the final cut after preseason, but a week or 2 in he was cut and picked up by another team. Needless to say he had 2 teams worth of thoughts from players and coaches of the bounty gate stuff.

He said it was well known throughout the league of most players and coaches of being total crap. He also told me that both teams the coaches stressed the players to keep their mouths shut about it in the public during that time. Obviously the penalties were brutal and teams didn't wanna be in the middle of it due to a player opening their mouths about it. He was friends with a Saint player who was picked up in 2013 after all that but didn't last long on the roster. He said the player, no name guy and can't remember, said you could tell by talking to the guys how upset everyone was at the league, and he felt strongly also the Saints got that kind of punishment and reputation, even though the dude was cut not long after.

Someone has to change Benson’s diaper and remind him it’s not 1946 every day.

I doubt he even knows who Roger Gooddell is anymore.

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He brought in a high profile investigative team to do a review after the league came down with their findings. We never heard anything about that investigation so I would assume it resulted in some pretty significant findings.

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There were reports at the time that nothing substantial was found during the investigation. Didn’t Free or whatever his name was even mention it, or was that the wiretapping investigation? I do remember an article on Nola saying all evidence found from the independent investigations of BG would be turned over to the league, and if nothing came out about it that was a good thing for the Saints.

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I will never understand why Benson didn't come out against the league during bounty gate.

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Especially after this. These are transcripts from Joe Vitt's testimony concerning Bountygate.

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Ginsberg asked Vitt about an interview with NFL investigators Joe Hummel and Jeff Miller in March 2012: "Jeff Miller and Joe Hummel showed me documents, and they said that I think it was 8-10 players had testified to these documents are true and, you know, that some coaches have come in and said that these documents - corroborated these documents and there's a bounty program in place. And I was absolutely shocked. And I could remember like it was yesterday looking at Joe Hummel and Jeff Miller in the face saying, you've got two guys responsible for this. This is Mike Cerullo, and this is Gregg Williams, both disgruntled employees that have been fired at our company. They denied even knowing who Mike Cerullo was, but they agreed with me that, yeah, Gregg Williams is a little crazy. They both agreed with me on that. So I would say that it wasn't a very good meeting."

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"And by the way, the second time I talked to investigators - I'm sorry, I forgot about this. The investigators, Jeff Miller in particular, acknowledged that I did not give any money to a bounty because he said to me, you know, we heard that your wife is so cheap that you have a hard time getting lunch money every day. That was his comment to me. And I said, well, your wife must have a pretty good sense of humor, too, with the clothes you're wearing right now. So they acknowledged that.

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Vitt on if Miller made other flippant remarks like the ones he made about Vitt's wife: "He was down at the game two weeks ago against the Philadelphia Eagles, and he was on our sideline. And he was over with our director of security, Danny Lawless, and he started laughing at Danny a little bit and said, 'Hey, maybe I should just go up to the sideline and say hello to Joe Vitt, he'd be glad to see me.' And Danny looked at him and couldn't believe it. He thought it was so funny, I guess, because I was just coming off my second game after my seven-week suspension.

"I guess it's a joke. I guess it's just a big joke. I can tell you, there's no one in New Orleans laughing, and no one in our organization is laughing. I'll tell you who is not laughing, is our owner Mr. Benson. Because Jeff Miller took a plane ride from New York down to New Orleans, and the way he talked to our owner, what he said to our owner made me want to throw up, to the point where Mr. Benson kicked him off the property and didn't let him back on the property; the third time when I talked to Jeff Miller at the Hilton.

"This is - let me tell you something. This almost killed our owner. Our owner has done nothing but be a great owner in the National Football League the whole time he's been in the league. ... And now this guy takes a plane ride down and throws some documents in front of our owner's face, and our owner has got to kick him out of the building? That's what we're dealing with. That's fine."

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Vitt went after Miller once again when he was asked about the next time he heard that there was any kind of NFL interest in the Saints referring to Miller as "Mr. Tough Guy Jeff Miller" who "spewed all the stuff on the desk and starting berating Mr. Benson."

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LINK

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so who is in charge?
His wife?

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only a little bit when it comes to the franchise. in other matters, she rules supreme.

I used to hate Jones. He’s now my favorite owner.

I also think deflate gate was rigged for ratings, like our last game with Atlanta.

The league pressed back hard against JJ. He was removed from 1 committee and they there was talk of getting him ousted from ownership if he kept it up.