First of all, the definition of "So called bounties" is not as cut-and-dry as you're pretending that it is. Ask Chris Carter if he is admitting to have frequently tried to take out people's knees and permanently injure them throughout his career.
So you believe that a "cart-off hit" has nothing to do with taking the opponent off of the field via a cart, that "QB out" has nothing to do with taking the quarterback out of the game, and that the use of the term "bounty" in slides, in combination with references to money, was just an innocent coincidence caused by the Saints' love of Dog the Bounty Hunter?
And you say we're stretching?
That's the whole point of the revelations this week. There is no "smoking gun".
Because ledgers which show payouts for the above mentioned terms, in addition to the use of the word "bounty" in combination with money (providing context), is not a smoking gun?
The other "evidence" would be these notes that were allegedly on the Saints' computer system.
The notes in the exhibits that I saw were transcribed from the Saints' handwritten notes. I don't know about any notes on a computer; the only thing from a computer that I've heard about are the ledgers which reference payouts to players, both of which are pretty damning in and of themselves.
However, as has been increasingly called into question from the beginning, and now Vitt has confidently flat-out accused, those notes have been "falsified and tampered with". They can't produce the originals or even say who wrote them. Shady as shit, and you know it.
So when someone accused of something says, "The evidence is false!," that seals the deal for you?
Aside from that, even if you want to believe the accused's exclamation of evidence tampering, there is still evidence which no one has disputed as being false.
There are still the slides which reference money and bounties.
There is still the video of a player (Hargrove or not) yelling, "Give me my money!"
There is still the statement from Gregg Williams, in which he said he knew the program "was rolling the dice with player safety and someone could have been maimed."
There are still three sources who told league investigators that Vilma offered $10,000 himself during a motivational speech by "raising his hands, each of which held stacks of bills, that he had two 'five-stacks,''' to give to the player who knocked Favre from the game.
There is still the signed statement from Hargrove, in which he says that coaches repeatedly told him to "stick to the story," "stay on the same page," and "play dumb."
Again, you continue to live in this black-and-white, all or nothing world. He admits to being misleading about the existence of a pay for performance system (which, again, exists in some form on every team in the NFL and has for generations), but adamantly denies admitting that intentionally injuring players had anything to do with these systems.
The investigator was there to investigate the existence of a bounty system. If Hargrove misled an investigator, then it's logical to conclude that he misled him in regard to the existence of a bounty system.
Accordingly, Hargrove's signed statement indicates that coaches informed him that the NFL was investigating a bounty system, and that Hargrove was instructed to "stick to the story," "stay on the same page," and "play dumb" about the inquiries as to the
bounty system. Every article that I've seen regarding Hargrove and the fact that he misled an investigator states that Hargrove admits to misleading the investigator only because the coaches told him to do so.
Because Hargrove's signed statement indicates that the coaches told him to deny the existence of a bounty system, and because the investigator was there to investigate the existence of a bounty system, I don't see how you can conclude that Hargrove only misled the NFL in regard to a pay-for-performance system.
Further, you want to damn the NFL for skewing and/or lying about certain facts, yet at the same time want to wholeheartedly believe Hargrove, a person who at the very least misled an investigator about a pay-for-performance program, if not a bounty system? So the NFL is not trustworthy because you think they lie, but a player who has lied/misled (and admitted to it) is trustworthy?
Tinted glasses. You has them.
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