Fractured Fairy Tales: Pay for performance program

It started out one afternoon when Ray Nagin was relaxing in his office with his copy of  Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine which he had been using as a how-to manual for governing post-Katrina New Orleans. Nagin would later offer this review of the book in an interview with Ethan Brown.

“I understand exactly the premise that they’re presenting,” Nagin says, holding the book aloft, “that’s for sure. Look, man, after this disaster there is big money! The shock-and-awe piece of what they’re talking about is absolutely correct.”

Nagin was reaching for his highlighter when Jonathan Vilma and Gregg Williams burst into the room and slammed an envelope down on his desk. Audio provided by filmmaker Sean Pampilon (who was following Williams around constantly at the time) reveals the following exchange.

"You want it?" Williams asks. "[Expletive] no," a voice answers, as others in the room applaud. "OK, it's $200 – you got it for a 'whack,' " Williams says. The rest of his words are drowned out by loud cheers.

We believe the "others in the room" at the time may have been Kip Holden and Bob Ellis although the only thing we're certain of at this point is that "Public Official A" is definitely Nagin.

Curiously Williams appears to have misspoken on the tape.  As it turns out, the money was actually distributed in $10,000 increments by somebody named Fradella.  Furthermore the money was not awarded for "whack" hits but instead for "cart-offs" of Fradella's granite.

During Nagin's tenure at City Hall, Fradella also donated "numerous truckloads" of granite -- the document does not say what its value was -- to the Nagin family's countertop business, Stone Age LLC.

Immediately upon leaving office, Nagin began working for Fradella as a paid consultant, according to the document, which is signed by Fradella. Fradella paid him $10,000 a month, an arrangement that lasted until March 2011, roughly 10 months after Nagin exited City Hall, it says.

None of these inaccuracies should surprise us, though, since anyone who watched the final minutes of the Saints-49ers Divisional Round playoff this year is aware that Gregg Williams never has any idea what he's doing or saying.

We're told that there may have once been some supporting evidence for the Nagin-Fradella pay for performance program at the bottom of an email to Nagin ,allegedly sent by Mike Ornstein but the email was subsequently erased by Greg Meffert.  Meanwhile Jonathan Vilma is suing Roger Goodell for having been implicated in this business at all.

Also due to some unfortunate internet commentary leveled by members of the totally not legitimate media, NFLPA spokesman, Fred Heebe, has already asked that the US Attorney in New Orleans recuse himself.

So everything seems pretty murky at this point. But Pamphilon, for his part, wants to remind us to please think of the children which he'll be available to do via any outlet that will give him air time.

Hazzards of taking football coachspeak too seriously

Robert Pollard in a 2005 interview with Magnet

My good friend Billy Dixon was my center in football from 7th grade through 12th grade. One day during practice, our head coach yelled, “If anybody sees anybody standing around with his thumb up his ass doing nothing, run over and knock him on his ass.” Five minutes later, Coach was standing on the sidelines drinking a cup of coffee. Billy ran over and knocked him on his ass. I learned that day that, for the most part, we’re all just standing around with our thumbs up our asses.

On a similar note, Peter Ginsberg, who is my new spirit animal, laid into Roger Goodell today.

“You have taken words that Gregg Williams used, colorful words like cart-offs and wax and [kill the head] and have chosen publicly to distort the meaning of those words notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Williams and others ha told you that those terms in no way relate to illegal hits or any bounty program that you have decided, sir, to misrepresent what those words, in fact, mean,” Ginsberg said.

Whatever Williams' meaning, Goodell has certainly managed to have him "carted off."  And so it's nice to see Goodell momentarily "knocked on his ass" so to speak.

Multiple sources tell PFT that Ginsberg’s remarks were “heated,” and one source present at the session perceived that Goodell’s face turned red during Ginsberg’s rant.

You're welp-come

Among the many news bits to come from today's Bountygate suspension hearings is this slideshow the NFL has produced mostly from crap Gregg Williams distributed during team meetings.  Surely there will be much to say about the implications of these documents as far as the league's case is concerned.  But that's not what's important right now.

What is important is that the slides are hilarious.  Reading them gives one the feeling of having friended Williams on Facebook only to discover that all he does all day is post insanely stupid GIFs and memes that talk shit on a 7th grade level.  Pure gold.