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Well it took almost two years, but at long last, an NFL story breaks out of NKY. Maybe now you guys will figure out where it is. As of a half hour ago, this story appeared in the NKY/Cincy Enquirer website.
Two Northern Kentucky lawyers, a Cincinnati ticket broker and a former University of Kentucky football player have filed a lawsuit accusing the New England Patriots of cheating in the 2002 Super Bowl and asking for refunds.
The Patriots and coach Bill Belichick illegally videotaped a St. Louis Rams walk-though before the game to gain an unfair advantage, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in US District Court in New Orleans, the host city of the game. The Patriots upset the Rams 20-17 on a last-second field goal.
The Patriots and the NFL could not immediately be reached for comment.
Through the lawsuit, the broker Kevin Hacker, who also attended the Super Bowl, asked the federal court to grant 72,922 people who attended the game a full refund. At a face value of $400 per ticket, that would mean the NFL would have to return $29,168,800.
Willie Gary, who played on the Rams’ Super Bowl team and was team captain his senior year for UK, wants each member of the Rams’ Super Bowl roster to receive $25,000 – the difference between the bonuses paid to the losing team and the winning team.
Gary, who now lives in Atlanta and plays arena football, also wants compensation for not receiving a Super Bowl XXXVI ring, which now sell for $125,000 on eBay, according to the suit.
For 45 players, the difference in bonuses and the value of the rings would be $6,750,000.
The plaintiffs’ attorneys – Eric Deters of Independence and Hugh Campbell Jr. of Villa Hills along with John Young of New Orleans – have asked that the suit be granted class-action status. The three lawyers allege the Patriots committed numerous crimes including fraud, racketeering and breach of contract in addition to violating Louisiana’s unfair trade practices and consumer protection act.
Also named on the lawsuit as plaintiffs are Missouri residents Peter Trout, a Rams’ season-ticket holder, and Marcus Miller, who attended the 2002 Super Bowl.
The NFL first caught the Patriots cheating last September. A Patriots employee was videotaping signals by the New York Jets coaches. Belichick was fined $500,000 and his team was ordered to pay $250,000 for stealing an opponent’s defensive signals. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell also ordered the team to give up its next first-round draft choice.
The idea for the suit came to Campbell, a self-described lifelong NFL fan, while watching this year’s Super Bowl.
During Super Bowl week, the Boston Herald reported that Patriots had also tape the Rams. Citing an anonymous source, the newspaper said that a member of the Patriots video staff taped the Rams’ last walk-through practice by staying in the Louisiana Superdome after their team’s picture.
Campbell said he found the spying on the New York Jets “crazy,” but when he learned of the alleged spying on the Rams, he began to think there might be grounds for a lawsuit.
He said he went to online football chat boards and found overwhelming support from fans and ticket holders for suing the Patriots. (That must have included PackerRats, eh?)
The suit states that Patriots violated the rule that “no video recording devices of any kind are permitted to be in use in the coaches’ booth, on the field, or in the locker room during the game.”
The suit claims the Patriots routinely taped opponents’ defensive signals from the sidelines, as it was caught doing against the Jets, to decode the communications and file them away for future games.
In the suit Kurt Warner, quarterback for the Rams in the 2002 Super Bowl, said that if the Patriots’ coaches knew the defensive signals, they could filter information to the quarterback through the headset in his helmet, which shuts off with 15 seconds left on the play clock.
Warner is again quoted in the suit stating he remembers little of the walk-through other than that the offense ran some of its red zone plays.
The Rams had seven plays inside the Patriots’ 30-yard line in the final quarter of the Super Bowl. At one point, the Patriots stopped the Rams on four successive plays inside the three-yard line.
Deters said a meeting Thursday between US Senator Arlen Specter and Goodell bolsters the claims made in the lawsuit during a Congressional inquiry Specter called for on the matter.
The New York Times reported today that Specter was informed that Belichick probably videotaped opposing sidelines for most of his head-coaching career and the NFL had destroyed evidence of the cheating dated to 2002, the year of the Rams went to the Super Bowl.
“We believe that the NFL definitely has culpability in light of the recent acknowledgment by … Goodell to Senator Specter that Belichick admitted they have been video taking teams since 2002,” Deters said. “We are consciously not naming the NFL as a defendant at this time in the hopes and belief it shows goodwill on our part to convince the NFL they should intervene on everyone’s behalf to encourage the Patriots to resolve this matter as soon as possible.”
Specter, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, also told the Times that the league is investigating Matt Walsh, a former Patriots video assistant who worked for the team during the 2002 Super Bowl.
Deters and Campbell said they would like to speak with Walsh. He and Campbell have not been able to contact Walsh, who has not worked for the Patriots since 2003 and now lives in Hawaii.
“I would love for our first subpoena to go out as soon as possible and that would be to Matt Walsh in Hawaii,” Campbell said. “My close second would be Bill Belichick.”
(The Deters family used to own the Packer bar I hang at. Eric Deters is a grandstander and a headline grabbing attorney. He’s also pretty good at what he does.)
Two Northern Kentucky lawyers, a Cincinnati ticket broker and a former University of Kentucky football player have filed a lawsuit accusing the New England Patriots of cheating in the 2002 Super Bowl and asking for refunds.
The Patriots and coach Bill Belichick illegally videotaped a St. Louis Rams walk-though before the game to gain an unfair advantage, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in US District Court in New Orleans, the host city of the game. The Patriots upset the Rams 20-17 on a last-second field goal.
The Patriots and the NFL could not immediately be reached for comment.
Through the lawsuit, the broker Kevin Hacker, who also attended the Super Bowl, asked the federal court to grant 72,922 people who attended the game a full refund. At a face value of $400 per ticket, that would mean the NFL would have to return $29,168,800.
Willie Gary, who played on the Rams’ Super Bowl team and was team captain his senior year for UK, wants each member of the Rams’ Super Bowl roster to receive $25,000 – the difference between the bonuses paid to the losing team and the winning team.
Gary, who now lives in Atlanta and plays arena football, also wants compensation for not receiving a Super Bowl XXXVI ring, which now sell for $125,000 on eBay, according to the suit.
For 45 players, the difference in bonuses and the value of the rings would be $6,750,000.
The plaintiffs’ attorneys – Eric Deters of Independence and Hugh Campbell Jr. of Villa Hills along with John Young of New Orleans – have asked that the suit be granted class-action status. The three lawyers allege the Patriots committed numerous crimes including fraud, racketeering and breach of contract in addition to violating Louisiana’s unfair trade practices and consumer protection act.
Also named on the lawsuit as plaintiffs are Missouri residents Peter Trout, a Rams’ season-ticket holder, and Marcus Miller, who attended the 2002 Super Bowl.
The NFL first caught the Patriots cheating last September. A Patriots employee was videotaping signals by the New York Jets coaches. Belichick was fined $500,000 and his team was ordered to pay $250,000 for stealing an opponent’s defensive signals. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell also ordered the team to give up its next first-round draft choice.
The idea for the suit came to Campbell, a self-described lifelong NFL fan, while watching this year’s Super Bowl.
During Super Bowl week, the Boston Herald reported that Patriots had also tape the Rams. Citing an anonymous source, the newspaper said that a member of the Patriots video staff taped the Rams’ last walk-through practice by staying in the Louisiana Superdome after their team’s picture.
Campbell said he found the spying on the New York Jets “crazy,” but when he learned of the alleged spying on the Rams, he began to think there might be grounds for a lawsuit.
He said he went to online football chat boards and found overwhelming support from fans and ticket holders for suing the Patriots. (That must have included PackerRats, eh?)
The suit states that Patriots violated the rule that “no video recording devices of any kind are permitted to be in use in the coaches’ booth, on the field, or in the locker room during the game.”
The suit claims the Patriots routinely taped opponents’ defensive signals from the sidelines, as it was caught doing against the Jets, to decode the communications and file them away for future games.
In the suit Kurt Warner, quarterback for the Rams in the 2002 Super Bowl, said that if the Patriots’ coaches knew the defensive signals, they could filter information to the quarterback through the headset in his helmet, which shuts off with 15 seconds left on the play clock.
Warner is again quoted in the suit stating he remembers little of the walk-through other than that the offense ran some of its red zone plays.
The Rams had seven plays inside the Patriots’ 30-yard line in the final quarter of the Super Bowl. At one point, the Patriots stopped the Rams on four successive plays inside the three-yard line.
Deters said a meeting Thursday between US Senator Arlen Specter and Goodell bolsters the claims made in the lawsuit during a Congressional inquiry Specter called for on the matter.
The New York Times reported today that Specter was informed that Belichick probably videotaped opposing sidelines for most of his head-coaching career and the NFL had destroyed evidence of the cheating dated to 2002, the year of the Rams went to the Super Bowl.
“We believe that the NFL definitely has culpability in light of the recent acknowledgment by … Goodell to Senator Specter that Belichick admitted they have been video taking teams since 2002,” Deters said. “We are consciously not naming the NFL as a defendant at this time in the hopes and belief it shows goodwill on our part to convince the NFL they should intervene on everyone’s behalf to encourage the Patriots to resolve this matter as soon as possible.”
Specter, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, also told the Times that the league is investigating Matt Walsh, a former Patriots video assistant who worked for the team during the 2002 Super Bowl.
Deters and Campbell said they would like to speak with Walsh. He and Campbell have not been able to contact Walsh, who has not worked for the Patriots since 2003 and now lives in Hawaii.
“I would love for our first subpoena to go out as soon as possible and that would be to Matt Walsh in Hawaii,” Campbell said. “My close second would be Bill Belichick.”
(The Deters family used to own the Packer bar I hang at. Eric Deters is a grandstander and a headline grabbing attorney. He’s also pretty good at what he does.)
........I would...but then you all know that. 
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