Judging from some of the name calling, this may not be the thread to try and post something reasonable, but I'm too lazy to find another thread so here goes.
1. In all probability, the Patriots taped the walkthrough. No one should be naiive enough to think otherwise. Walsh probably knew about it, but never had a copy. My guess is the Patriots destroyed it themselves rather than handing it over to the NFL. Walsh will probably tell this to Goodell next week, but without proof it doesn't matter.
2. As far as the NFL's motivation for negotiating, it's all about the media. How much do you think any of the major outlets would have paid Walsh to get their hands on those? If we suddenly see this getting played on SportsCenter, it would get drawn out far longer than it should and Arlen Specter would give himself a heart attack. Frankly I'm a little baffled as to why he negotiated with the league, but I'm not jumping to any conclusions about covert Patriots payouts.
What we've learned from all of this, if we didn't already know, is that Belichick lives by the adage if you're not cheating, you're not trying. He got caught and paid the price (not a heavy enough price in my opinion, but it's been paid regardless). The league, despite Goodell's tough-on-crime stance, is more worried about protecting its public image - which is understandable given the money at stake. There is nothing more that can be proven (even if there's probably more that actually happened) and they want this to just go away.
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