Jeremy Shockey Gets Sean Payton To Clear His Name

Jeremy Shockey is going to great lengths to prove that he's not the snitch who notified the NFL of the Saints' bounty program, including texting Sean Payton, and posting that conversation for everyone to see.

CBS's Mike Freeman was adamant about this yesterday, oddly shouting from the rooftops that the snitch wasn't Shockey. To which we ask, how does he know? If he knows who first went to the NFL, why not report that? That's absolutely newsworthy, and it's not as if the bounty story was Freeman's, so he's not protecting a source here. Alternately, if he only knew that Shockey wasn't the source, then didn't that denial have to come directly from Shockey's camp, in which case of course they'd say that?

But, step back. There are a couple larger points that are getting lost in the witch hunt. First, there's not just one snitch. Lots of folks were talking. The NFL didn't produce a 10,000 page report based on one source. And beyond that, being a snitch is not a bad thing. If you think what the Saints were doing was bad or dirty or illegal (and we all seem to be in agreement on that), why persecute the whistleblower? The world is pretty screwed up, sometimes.