Bounty-Gate Rolls On, and a Filmmaker's Head May Be Rolling with It

Some people don't watch football because they can't afford to. I'm not talking about financially, since so many games are aired on free TV. Most people can't just drop what they're doing on Sunday for three hours and watch an entire football game. And even those that do can't understand half of what they're watching. Was that a dive or a counter? Why did he throw it to that guy? Who's Matt Moore? Okay, a lot of us still aren't sure about that last one.

But like politics or any other current events, a lack of knowledge doesn't stop anyone from forming an opinion about it. And it certainly didn't stop filmmaker Sean Pamphilon, the independent filmmaker who released a 12-minute audio file of former Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams firing up his unit in a pregame speech earlier this year. 

This series of events that we're calling "Bountygate" is one of those transcendental topics where the facts get lost in the feelings of the debaters. When we discuss things we don't understand, we replace the contexts of foreign locales with our own, even though few of us have ever put on a pair of shoulder pads or even tried to tackle another person. 

The release of that audio, to me, represents a calculated decision on his part, masked as a crusade for a greater truth. "I felt strongly that the public had a right to hear this material and judge for themselves," Pamphilon wrote in a recent blog post. My point is that it's not our place to judge; we don't have the proper context or the knowledge of what happens in a professional football game.

I'm loathe to portray Pamphilon as a whistleblower. An audio file may not have been the best way to deliver the truth that he sought to expose, that Williams actually directed his football players to play football in an ethical gray area—within the rules but contrary to the spirit of the game. Audio files can be edited, spliced and yanked out of their original contexts. To release information in that way came off as manipulative and insincere. 

The NFL locker room is a sacred place. Entering one is a privilege. When discussing what happens there, one cannot possibly tread lightly enough. That place is like Vegas before Vegas. What happens there, stays there. At least it did.

In the late 1960s, Green Bay Packers guard Jerry Kramer made tape recordings of his head coach's pre-game talks. The breach in etiquette could be forgiven as his coach was the legendary Vince Lombardi.

The sanctity of the locker room was routinely invaded after most of the Super Bowls in the 1980s and 1990s, as TV cameras brought that celebration into living rooms across America. But more and more we're seeing cameras in locker rooms after regular season games, before games and in the tunnels at the half. But even with that erosion of privacy, we're not much smarter about the game than we were in Lombardi's day.

The NFL does not operate with a presumption of transparency. Gregg Williams was not regulating the oil industry or setting tariffs on imported toys from China. In fact, the NFL goes out of its way to make sure you understand as little about football as possible. In chopping out 12 minutes of audio from the context of a football game—and really, an entire football season—it could be argued that Pamphilon operated with even less transparency than his intended target.

Does that stance defend Williams' directives to incapacitate opposing players? Not explicitly. But I find it hard to believe that the opposing coach in the other locker room wasn't screaming something similar to his own team. Again, context is a big deal here, and Pamphilon's offering to the debate delivers absolutely zero.

"It’s a cowards play [sic] to send someone off to do your malicious bidding," Pamphilon wrote, in an absolute joke of a comment. That's exactly what coaching is, and why Willams was paid $3 million a year to do it (and why a majority of his charges earned even more).

Who owns the rights to that audio, anyway? Pamphilon would have you believe that it didn't matter who owned it, that he was within his rights to expose Williams as a big fat meanie. But former Saint Steve Gleason, Pamphilon's original subject and The Reason We're All Here, says that he and his family own whatever work product to which Pamphilon was privy, and that the release of that material constituted a breach in contract.

The only thing that guy did was make it harder for future filmmakers. No greater good was served. There was nothing in that file that we didn't already know. The shocked reaction of an ignorant minority does not make the recordings newsworthy.

It is kind of shocking to actually hear it, but again, this is the NFL. It's not a business where they pull out slabs of carpet for naps at halftime.

The release of that audio serves no greater purpose than to further Pamphilon's own publicity, a publicity that should be considered tainted at this point. We learned nothing from that audio. And Pamphilon's originally-intended creation, and almost certainly his friendship with Gleason, have been obliterated. This was not a pursuit of truth so much as a quest for press. Mission accomplished.

Steve Gleason understood the perils of his profession and didn't seek to bury anyone for it. He saw the bigger picture that Pamphilon couldn't. Or wouldn't.