Watch: Drew Brees calls Bountygate a "smear campaign"
(CBS News) New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees said the ongoing bounty scandal shadowing the team is "unfortunate" and said it appeared to be a meritless "smear campaign."
Appearing on CBS' "Late Show With David Letterman" on Thursday night, Brees said the NFL's investigation into the Saints' alleged pay-for-injury scheme has been "extremely unfair" because of a lack of hard evidence.
"Put forth the facts, the truth, and if indeed there was a pay-to-injure scheme, then people will get punished, and if there's not, then let's exonerate these men because, at this point, it seems like it's a smear campaign," Brees said. "We're dragging them through the mud; we're ruining their reputations and careers with no true evidence."
The NFL has produced emails, ledgers, notes and witness statements linking Saints coaches and players to a bounty system in which cash was doled out for "cart-offs" and "knockouts" of opposing players.
NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said in an email to The Associated Press that "the evidence is overwhelming."
Brees also acknowledged a sense of Bountygate fatigue.
"I think I can speak for all fans in America for that matter, we are tired of hearing about it," he said. "We don't want to talk about it anymore."
Sensing Brees' exasperation, Letterman cracked that he could get the star QB a deal with the New York Jets.
Brees' response: "They have enough quarterbacks."
Earlier this week, former Saints linebacker Scott Fujita, who was one of four players suspended by the league, echoed Brees' comments on the bounty investigation.
"I'm not saying the NFL is intentionally lying," Fujita told the AP. "I've been willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they may have just been working with the information they've been given, even though much of that information was inaccurate and lacked credibility. It's their cavalier interpretation of everything that's been way off. They clearly proceeded with a public smear campaign with very little regard for the truth."
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Why is it not called "Watergategate"?
And when did the media decide the suffix "gate" could blindly cover every scandal, from politicians (or now third parties)...
The Watergate office complex was where the Democratic National Convention had their offices, which were broken into by members of "CREEP", (Committee for the Re-Election of the President). The complex itself was named after the "Water Gate" area where symphony orchestra concerts were staged on the Potomac River between 1935 and 1965.
And yes, the scandal became known as "Watergate" since that was the name of the office complex where it happened. That name (Watergate) also happened to be the name of a nearby hotel, but the break-in did not happen in the hotel.
The suffix is used to embellish a noun or name to suggest the existence of a far-reaching scandal, particularly in politics and government. As a CBC News Online column noted in 2001, the term may "suggest unethical behavior and a cover-up". The same usage has spread into languages other than English; examples of -gate being used to refer to local political scandals have been reported from Argentina, Germany, Hungary, Greece and the former Yugoslavia. Such usages have been criticized by commentators as cliched and misleading.
The adoption of -gate to suggest the existence of a scandal was promoted by William Safire, the conservative New York Times columnist and former Nixon administration speechwriter.