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"FacebookPinterest\n\n So much of Bountygate boils down to evidence. This is the biggest scandal in the history of the NFL, and when the initial punishments came down\u2014long suspensions for both players and coaches\u2014they came with only vague notions of evidence. There were documents, the league said, that proved coaches up and down the ladder knew about serious rules violations and did nothing to stop them. There was talk of pre-game statements and a pool of dirty money and allegations of $10,000 bounties. The penalties were the most serious the league has ever handed down. There were lawsuits and overturned decisions and secret meetings.\n\n Because the NFL is so focused on doing everything behind closed doors, on protecting the brand\u2014\"the shield\"\u2014no matter what, the public has seen little in the way of evidence. It was the reason a three-person appeals panel suspended commissioner Roger Goodell's suspensions, saying he could only act if he finds evidence of behavior \"detrimental to the league.\"\n\n Well, I was with Sean Pamphilon when he brought that very kind of evidence to NFL headquarters on a Wednesday morning in May. I was next to him as he walked into the lobby and right up to the front desk.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n Filmmaker Sean Pamphilon \n\n Pamphilon is a filmmaker whose documentary on Ricky Williams, Run Ricky Run, was part of ESPN's \"30 for 30\" series. Now he's more commonly known as the guy who released the audio of former Saints coach Gregg Williams telling his players to target the heads of opponents and offering money for hits to the quarterback's head. He knows he turned up the volume on a scandal, and the NFL hates scandals.\n\n \"It's an $11 billion industry,\" Pamphilon told me at one point. \"They say it's nine, but it's really eleven. That's a lot of money, a lot of resources. I'm looking at this giant amorphous thing that could swallow me up, and I'd have no idea how it would happen.\"\n\n Now he'd come to the NFL headquarters on Park Avenue in New York City to show them some evidence that no one besides Pamphilon and a few others have seen. There were security guards in every direction, each wearing gray pants and a dark blue jacket that didn't seem to fit quite right. Near the front of the lobby was a stone sculpture of what looked like two lovers embracing.\n\n Pamphilon told the guard that he had a tape the NFL would want to see. \"I'm willing to show it to them,\" he said.\n\n The guard eventually put Pamphilon on the phone with someone upstairs. There was a moment of silence.\n\n \"I thought you guys were interested in seeing this,\" Pamphilon said into the receiver. \"I have a note that I'd like to give Roger.\"\n\n Then he listened. When he put down the phone, he looked smug. \"I bet they're consulting with a lawyer right now.\"\n\n He was told to wait.\n\n Finally, two very large men with NFL badges hanging over their ties arrived in the lobby. They didn't look happy. It appeared they weren't here to throw him out, though. They wanted him to come with them\u2014but he had to go alone. So I watched as they took him through the turnstiles and into an elevator. Then the doors closed, and he was gone.\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n It was in the banquet hall of a hotel outside San Francisco the night before the Saints playoff game against the 49ers in January. Pamphilon was documenting the life of former Saints player Steve Gleason. In 2006, in the first home game in the Superdome after Katrina ravaged New Orleans, Gleason blocked a punt that was recovered in the end zone for a touchdown. The dramatic moment symbolized and signaled the turnaround of both the franchise and the region. (The mayor later awarded him the key to the city.) In 2011 he was diagnosed with ALS\u2014and his wife gave birth to a son. He agreed to have Pamphilon document the last few years of his life, both to make a movie and to create a video library for Gleason's family.\n\n After his diagnosis, the Saints welcomed Gleason back into the fold, which included giving him total access to team facilities and meetings. Pamphilon was sitting in the back of the room that night, next to Gleason and Scott Fujita, a linebacker and close friend of Gleason's from his days on the Saints. He was operating two cameras, one pointing at Gleason and Fujita and one facing forward, toward defensive coordinator Gregg Williams and an overhead projector. Most of the meeting seemed normal. Players were calm, focused. The coach went over some highlights of their defensive-game plan. Pamphilon was still trying to make sure he had a good shot of Gleason when he noticed a slight change in the coach's tone.\n\n \"The NFL's a production business,\" Williams said. \"We'll never forget about it.\" The coach's momentum built. \"Kill the head and the body will die,\" he said. He repeated it for emphasis. \"Kill the head and the body will die.\" He continued: \"We've got to do everything in the world to make sure we kill Frank Gore's head. We want him running sideways. We want his head sideways.\" He talked about taking the backup running back out of the game. He talked about taking the crowd out of the game. He reminded the players that this is a great game but that it's \"a production business.\" He went over some situation-specifics.\n\n Then Williams got to 49ers quarterback Alex Smith.\"On a two-man route,\" he said, pausing for a moment and pointing at his own chin route, \"we hit fucking Smith right there. Remember me.\" Then he rubbed his fingers together\u2014like what you might do while not saying the word money. \"I got the first one. I got the first one,\" he said. \"Go get it. Go lay that motherfucker out.\"\n\n Maybe some of it was metaphorical, Pamphilon thought. But still, this was after so many stories about the devastating long-term effect of football concussions. After Chris Henry jumped\u2014or fell\u2014from the back of a pickup truck and doctors discovered that his twenty-six-year-old brain looked like an Alzheimer's patient's. After Dave Duerson shot himself in the chest, preserving his brain for concussion research. This was after the league had supposedly changed its tone and begun to crack down against hits to the head. Pamphilon felt disgusted. For the first time in the months he'd been shooting around the Saints, he felt very uncomfortable. He felt a little scared.\n\n The coach went on with some more about the specifics of the game plan, but he always came back to the same point: \"Kill the fucking head,\" he repeated over and over. \"Every single one of you, before you get off the pile, affect the head. Early, affect the head. Continue to touch and hit the head. \"\n\n He reminded the team to never show weakness. He handed out cash awards\u2014$200 each\u2014for various defensive plays. The first two envelopes went out to players for what a jovial Williams called \"whacks\"\u2014as in \"whack hits.\" Pamphilon had never heard the term, and it has since been debated publicly, but it's safe to say a \"whack\" is an extra-hard hit. They are the kinds of hits coaches tell their players plant seeds of doubt in the minds of their opponents.\n\n For the first time all meeting, both Fujita and Gleason were seen smiling on the video. Most of the players in the room laughed, and each time, in unison, they encouraged one another to \"give it back\"\u2014meaning back into the overall prize pot, so the cash awards next time would be even bigger. The winners complied. Then the coach reminded the players to target specific injuries on 49ers: \"We need to find out in the first two series of the game,\" Williams said, \"that little wide receiver, number 10, about his concussion. We need to fucking put a lick on him, right now.\" On star receiver Michael Crabtree's knee: \"He becomes human when we fucking take out that outside ACL.\" He added: \"We need to decide on how many times we can beat Frank Gore's head.\"\n\n Then he told his players to \"never apologize for the way we compete,\" and the meeting ended with an inspirational DVD.\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n Pamphilon wasn't sure what to do with the video. He knew Steve Gleason wouldn't want to do anything that might hurt the Saints organization in any way, and Pamphilon didn't want to betray Gleason. There's no way of knowing if the mere existence of such a video\u2014the Saints knew Pamphilon was filming that night\u2014may have influenced the league's decision to go public, but on March 2 the NFL announced that, based on a two-year investigation, the league would be punishing the Saints for a \"bounty program\" and later that Williams was suspended from the league indefinitely. Pamphilon approached Gleason and talked about making the tape public. But Gleason didn't want to. Pamphilon knew that if he released the tape anonymously, eventually people would realize it was him anyway\u2014and he certainly wasn't looking to get into a public spat with a dying football hero.\n\n But it weighed on him. He couldn't believe, after all the talk of concussions, that this was still going on so blatantly. He thought it spoke to the culture of the league, of the media's \"obsession with concussive hits.\" He went back to Gleason and told him he really thought the public should hear what it sounded like when an NFL coach tells his players to target a man's head. He told him he was going to release the audio portion of the tape\u2014and that he hoped they would be able to continue working together.\n\n Soon Pamphilon was getting text messages from Gleason's friends, including Drew Brees and Scott Fujita, both members of the NFL Players Association ecutive committee. In mid-March, Fujita sent Gleason an epic text message discussing the release. He copied Pamphilon on the message.\n\n \"Whatever Sean ultimately decides to do with this will be his decision, completely independent of you me,\" Fujita wrote. \"I also think this is in no way about the Saints. It's not even an attack so much on the one person who said those words. It's really an indictment on the culture of football, a big part of which is still archaic has yet to evolve. Guys like you me have evolved.\"\n\n Brees, an ever diligent protector of his team, didn't ask Pamphilon not to release the tapes. But he did want to have a say in the timing. He said he wanted to read the essay Pamphilon had written to accompany the audio. He sent Pamphilon a series of text and voice-mail messages.\n\n \"Just talked to Scott [Fujita],\" Brees wrote to Pamphilon a few nights before the audio was published. \"He does not want to see the message, but Steve and I do. All I am asking is that you give us the opportunity in total confidence. My eyes will be the only one to see it.\"\n\n Pamphilon began to feel manipulated. He had someone telling him not to do it (Gleason), someone telling him to wait (Brees), and someone telling him to do what he needed to do (Fujita). He didn't know whom to trust. When he talked to me about it, around the same time, he didn't know whom he could turn to with evidence like this. He didn't particularly trust ESPN.\n\n Pamphilon knew all about the \"Worldwide Leader in Sports.\" He had spent years working there himself, cutting highlights and producing features for football shows up and down the lineup. The dictum from on high was always: lots of bone-crushing hits, lots of prolonged reaction shots. And for years that's what he did. Now, when he watches football\u2014from the pro level down to teenagers\u2014so much of the game is focused on the big hits and the big reactions. He notices the sport looking more like professional wrestling every year.\n\n In the beginning of April, he finally sent the audio of Gregg Williams to Yahoo! Sports. Not long after the post went up, it felt like every outlet in America picked up the story. The audio, and Pamphilon's name, circulated across the sports world.\n\n Gleason released a statement explaining that he had opposed the release of the tape and that he felt betrayed by someone he trusted. (Through an attorney, Gleason declined to comment, except to say that he \"hopes this will all be resolved soon.\") With this single act, Pamphilon severed ties with a business partner, picked a fight with the most powerful league in sports, and violated the trust of people he cared deeply about. A Saints fan called into a radio show to compare Pamphilon to Jerry Sandusky \"getting on the news and trying to justify what he did.\" Sports Illustrated's Peter King blasted Pamphilon in his widely read \"Monday Morning QB\" column.\n\n \"Pamphilon betrayed the wishes of a dying man and a former very close friend by releasing the tape; that much we know,\" King wrote. \"This is one of those cases where what's legally right shouldn't matter. What's morally right should. What's morally right is that Pamphilon, who never would have heard what Williams said without being attached to Gleason, shouldn't have released the tape without Gleason's permission.\" Then King ended with this: \"I cannot find it in my heart to quite call Pamphilon a rat, but I cannot call him a hero either.\"\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n When the elevator doors opened at NFL HQ, Pamphilon was several floors below the surface streets. He was expecting to go up. He wondered if he even had cell service down here. He stepped out into what felt like a maze. There were mannequins along the walls, each dressed in an NFL jersey. The men took him deeper and deeper into the bowels of the building. When they finally arrived in a meeting room, the men wanted to make sure he wasn't secretly recording anything.\n\n Pamphilon took a seat in front of two very serious-looking men. He was suddenly very conscious of the fact that the NFL security is partly composed of former cops. In fact, one of the men, Joe Hummel, is a former FBI agent. He was the league's chief investigator, and Bountygate was his last big case, the product of years of work. In April he announced that he'd be leaving to become the vice president of an insurance company. His boss, Jeff Miller, was also in front of Sean. Miller, the league's vice president of strategic security, is the former commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police.\n\n There was an awkward, prolonged silence. Pamphilon made a quip to cut the tension\u2014later he couldn't even remember what he said\u2014but nobody laughed. It felt like Miller was staring into his eyes, forcing him into submission. Pamphilon pulled his computer from his backpack and put it on the table so they could see the screen. He's not technically savvy, but he expected he could get it to come up in a second. It wasn't working, though. He tried to explain that it wasn't like a link in an e-mail: His film partner put it online and there's a password, but it didn't seem to be working.\n\n He tried another joke, but again Hummel and Miller were not amused. He could feel what little credibility he may have had in their eyes slipping fast. At this point, he knew they were likely thinking: Who is this guy? Does he even have a video? Is this all some prank?\n\n After several minutes of trying, he finally got the laptop working. The video popped up, and the two NFL employees seemed to snap to attention. They watched Scott Fujita and Steve Gleason in the back of a banquet hall, reacting to a defensive game plan. They heard \"Kill the head and the body will die,\" over and over. They heard Gregg Williams talk about targeting injuries, targeting heads. And they heard him handing out money to players as they clapped and hollered. Then they watched the footage from the other camera, and they saw an NFL coach point at his own head and tell his players\u2014the men in his charge, the men whose livelihoods depend on pleasing him\u2014that he was paying cash for the first head shot. They heard it again: \"Kill the head and the body will die.\"\n\n The investigators wanted to know who was in the room that night. Which players? Which coaches? Pamphilon told them he was focused on his cameras; he didn't see. Miller looked him in the eye, an \"alpha-male, are-you-lying-to-us stare,\" Pamphilon would later call it.\n\n The mood had changed. It was still far from friendly, but he'd made them pay attention. And whether they thought he was a hero or a rat, they shook his hand and thanked him for coming in.\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n In his latest project, a documentary called The United States of Football, Pamphilon has decided to go directly at the NFL. He loves the game, but like so many fans these days, he's conflicted. He's spent months crisscrossing the country, talking to coaches, players, doctors, and parents. He's advocating for safety but also asking this country to examine its relationship to football. He wants transparency, a willingness to put the health of human beings above the profit margin.\n\n\n\n In the days I was with him on his trip, he and his photographer drove from New York to New Jersey to Maryland and into Washington, D.C., stopping to interview and film experts in each place. The afternoon after we visited the NFL headquarters, Pamphilon got a call. It was from Joe Hummel. Mostly, Pamphilon just listened. Hummel wanted to thank him again for coming in, for caring about the safety of the players and the integrity of the game. He sounded sincere. The call lasted less than two minutes, but for Pamphilon, it was validation. While Pamphilon may not be accepted by the Who Dat Nation, he's not an enemy of the NFL, either.\n\n Before we parted ways, Sean wanted to show me more evidence\u2014not from Bountygate, but a taste of what he's been fighting for. When we got to Annapolis, the May air was cool, and the sun sparkled off the boats along the road. After some troubled navigation, we finally pulled into the parking lot of what used to be a large white house, nestled in the shade of sprawling trees. It was a nursing home with dementia care, the home of Ralph Wenzel\u2014a guard for the Pittsburgh Steelers and the San Diego Chargers\u2014from 1966 to 1973.\n\n A sweet woman greeted Pamphilon with a hug in the parking lot: Wenzel's wife, Eleanor Perfetto. In 1995, when he was 52, Wenzel began suffering memory lapses. Soon his symptoms worsened, and he had to quit his job as a coach and teacher. Perfetto, who has a Ph.D. in public health, told his story to the media, and his case helped draw the first attention to football-related early-onset dementia. In 2009, Perfetto testified before a congressional committee, insisting that the NFL \"must stop its denial of the relationship between brain trauma and brain disease.\"\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n Former Steeler Ralph Wenzel\n\n Inside, we saw Wenzel, who was now frail, unable to recognize faces. At six feet two, he used to weigh 250 pounds. Now, though, he was barely 140. He was in a blue hospital chair to accommodate his diminished state. His eyes were closed, and his arms were folded peacefully over his chest.\n\n Perfetto explained that, at this point, Wenzel couldn't say anything and could barely understand what was going on around him. Though he'd been living in a home for dementia patients since 2006, she explained that she still visited him several times a week.\n\n \"He doesn't have long,\" Perfetto said.\n\n Pamphilon had been out to interview Perfetto before, a few years ago, but she wanted him to come back to see her husband one last time before he died. It would be a matter of weeks. Pamphilon was soft-spoken with her, gentle in their conversation. He asked her what she used to imagine these years would be like. She looked at her husband. \"We used to imagine our dream house,\" she said, stoic but sturdy. She's been dealing with this for a long time. \"I thought we'd be sitting next to each other, watching the sun set.\"\n\n She got up and came back with a plastic cup full of orange juice and a straw. \"Are you thirsty,\" she said, knowing Wenzel might might not understand.\n\n He made a deep growling sound, like someone trying to communicate.\n\n \"Do you want some juice?\"\n\n She carefully guided her husband's face toward her and propped the straw in his mouth.\n\n \"That's right. That's right.\" Her voice was warm, soft. She wiped a drop of juice from Wenzel's arm. \"He used to be so big, so strong,\" she said.\n\n After the NFL announced the original suspensions, the players appealed. Jonathan Vilma sued the commissioner for defamation, and in July he and several other witnesses testified under oath that Goodell had his facts wrong. (There was also a sworn affidavit from Drew Brees.) Just before the season started, the appeals panel overturned the player suspensions. Before making a second ruling, Goodell is meeting with the players involved. As fans and journalists and players wait and the fate of a season hangs in the balance, there is still a dearth of evidence.\n\n Soon, Pamphilon would be back with his family in Seattle. In less than a month, Eleanor Perfetto would call him to let him know that her husband was dead.\n\n At the moment, though, she was still trying to get her husband to drink some juice. Pamphilon asked her why she'd called him again, why she'd invited him back to see Ralph one more time. She said she made the decision when she saw the news one day and heard the audio of a coach telling his players, \"Kill the head and the body will die.\"\n\n \"That's when I called you,\" she said. \"That's when I wanted you to come back here. It was so upsetting.\"\n\n She pointed to her husband, once one of the biggest, toughest football players in the world\u2014now fragile, curled up, sipping juice, waiting for the relief of death.\n\n \"When someone says, 'Kill the head and the body will die,' this is what that looks like.\"\n\n Michael J. Mooney is a staff writer at D Magazine"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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