More on Goodell's Memo to the Competition Committee

Don't miss our story in today's print edition about the memo that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell sent Thursday to the league's competition committee, detailing his proposals for preserving the competitive integrity of the game and maintaining the public's confidence in the sport in the wake of the "SpyGate" scandal.

Here are a few interesting things that didn't make the story because of space limitations.

In his memo, Goodell also asked the competition committee to conduct "a thorough review of our competitive rules and policies to ensure that they are current, appropriate, and well-understood by all clubs," he wrote. Goodell cited the league's anti-tampering policies and crowd noise rules during games as areas that might merit review by the competition committee.

The tampering rules are particularly intriguing. They cover what teams can and cannot do in terms of contacting coaches and players under contract to other clubs. Those rules are almost universally ignored in the weeks leading up to the annual opening of the free agent market, when agents regularly line up prospective deals for their clients with new teams at a time when such conversations are technically prohibited. Now Goodell is asking the competition committee to study the issue, determine if it's a problem and make a recommendation about what, if anything, should be done about it.

Goodell also asks the competition committee in his memo to "consider how the 'equity rule' will apply to cases in which a team loses the use of its communication systems during a game."

That "equity rule" currently does not require a team to shut down its coach-to-quarterback communication system when the opposing team's system malfunctions during a game. This rule has produced periodic suspicions of a visiting team's communication system being jammed or otherwise sabotaged. Currently, only a complete malfunction of all communication systems, including those from the press box to the sideline, require the opposing team to shut down its systems during a game, according to league officials.

By Mark Maske | March 7, 2008; 6:00 AM ET | Category: League
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Comments

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Great story in the paper and great post here. The question (problem)is whether Goodell would have taken a 1st rounder if the Pats didn't already have 2 1st round picks. He probably would not have. Goodell brought the additional scrutiny, that he so detests, upon himself by virtue of the fact that the Pats still have the 7th overall pick. The mic'd helmets are the biggest question mark with the cheating issue. Get rid of the bench to field communication, don't increase it to include the Defense. Electronic communication, in today's age, is suspect at minimum to tampering in multiple ways.

Posted by: delOH | March 8, 2008 7:14 AM

there will not be any integrity in the league as long as cheating is going on and this is a common practice in the league all Goodell trying to do is that he trying to show to spector we are doing something to change and make sure spygate doesn't happen again so leave us alone but think about this for a minute is Spector sees that you are doing something just the sake of doing something so you can be left alone and cheating practices gonna continue trust me he's not gonna leave you alone the mistake that Spector made was that he should have told Goodell that you have one year to clean up this mess if not the NFL incoming revenue is gonna be frozen on yearly bases unless iam convinced this is not going on no more and one more thing, let Goodell know that if you are fixing this so that the NFL's revenue can be unfrozen and for that purpose alone the NFL's revenue is gonna be frozen again but this time is not gonna be unforzen and trust me the Govt freezing 7 to 9 Billion yearly will put serious scare to not only to the NFL but to the NFL owners.

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