Kent Babb's story in the Kansas City Star on Sunday morning is still reverberating throughout the NFL world. Several national folks have addressed Babb's story (which you can read here) in columns and on Twitter. We've rounded up a few of those reactions after the jump.
Babb will be going on with Nick Wright on 610 Sports this afternoon where I'm sure he'll be talking more about the story.
Here's what some of the non-KC folks are saying about the story. Drop any other interesting ones you see in the comments section. I plucked some of these at random.
Whoa now. Those are very serious charges. Does Haley have proof that a federal crime has been committed and his phone was tampered with, or an office he works in has been bugged so team management could spy on him and other employees? If he has proof or something more than simple paranoia, out with it -- and expose the team for something incredibly scurrilous. If not, that's a damaging rap to lay on someone, or an organization. Haley needs to set the record straight.
Still, the turnover in the organization has been fairly epidemic, and those who have retired or have been let go seem to have a particularly sharp axe to grind - or at least that's the way things are portrayed in the piece. It's hard to know for sure what's really going on in an organization unless you're in the building every day, but this report does not augur well for a Chiefs franchise still trying to get to the next level of competition. Pioli learned a lot during his time in the New England Patriots organization, but it has to be asked - is he yet another ex-Pat who took the lessons of Bill Belichick and applied them the wrong way?
In an investigative report, the paper looks at many aspects of the front office and writes about the scared culture in Kansas City. What does it all mean?
Maybe nothing. But it is fascinating to read. Still, stories bugged phones and rampant paranoia is nothing new in the NFL. I've heard that stuff before in other buildings. It doesn't mean it happened.
The truth is, Haley and Kansas City general manager Scott Pioli didn't work well together. That's the bottom line regardless of any juicy tales of turmoil and espionage.
Is Pioli an over controlling person who focuses on unimportant minutae and breeds an environment of "walking on eggshells" as many of the former employees interviewed suggest, or is he just detail-oriented and meticulous, shaking an organization that needed it, as others say? The article does a decent job of presenting both sides, and the Chiefs had to have been concerned to make people available for interviews after approached.
Somewhere, Al Davis is laughing his ethereal ass completely off, from Kent Babb of the KC Star:
Great work here by Kent Babb of the KC Star on the oppressive work environment at the
#Chiefs:, post-Carl Peterson
This story on the "Stalag 17" atmosphere inside the Chiefs' front office by the KC Star is a total jaw-dropper: