With the extremely embarassing legal matter facing New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, 92-9 The Game's Morning Show of John Fricke and Hugh Douglas were joined on Tuesday's show by former NFL executive and current legal scholar and contributor to The MMQB.com, Andrew Brandt.
A former sports agent, Brandt left the agent side for the team side when he was named a VP with the Green Bay Packers from 1999-2008. There, he negotiated all player contracts, managed the NFL Salary Cap and handled all football business operations in building a team that has continued to have sustained success. In recent years, Brandt has worked for ESPN as a legal and business analyst, and currently hosts "The Business of Sports Podcast with Andrew Brandt."
Possessing a great deal of knowledge into the potential legal challenges Kraft faces, when asked if the Patriots owner could find himself behind bars, Brandt said, “No, there’s not.
"What happens is with these things is that we conflate different things. There’s some sex trafficking allegations going on with this spa. That is of course is separate from what's going to happen with Robert Kraft. It looks like two misdemeanor charges. I would suspect – unless he denies it – there will be some community service, pay a fine, get it off your record after that. I’m a lawyer and I get denying charges, but if they have his video, they have his name, they have everything about (him) and he was stop the day before and identified...I think it'll be hard to maintain innocence of these charges."
What are some of the ramifications facing him?
“People are more interested in this (the league's response) than the legal stuff," Brandt said. With his statement yesterday (Monday), to me, they were trying to get people off the tracks right now and just let this play out and see what law enforcement does, which could take months. The penalty could be something like removing him from control of the organization for some time. It’s happened to Jim Irsay for substance abuse in Indianapolis, but of course he has a son who runs the team too, and he won’t be barred from anything."
Given the areas of concern – the legal court, the NFL court and public court. This has to be a horrible look for him?
“Listen, the shame is the big thing here, and we're talking about a brand that is one of the top two or three things in sports, and the brand is identified primarily by three people, Tom Brady, Bill Belichick or Robert Kraft," Brandt said. Whether that spills over to A) Brady, B) Belichick or C) the Patriots brand, is really up to us...whoever judges those things. But it’s not fair to say it won’t have zero effect, of course, it'll have an effect. Maybe he’s completely innocent, but it seems like there's a mountain of evidence against him. I don't want to make light of this, but may be best to admit it and take a voluntary leave of absence agreed to by the Commissioner, and by the time the season starts, this is gone from view."
Is there any way you see him losing control of the Patriots?
“No, I don’t [tink so]," said Brandt. "I know a lot of people mention Donald Sterling. But he had a 30-year history of being a scumbag and that played against him, in addition to his racist comments, so I don’t see anything like that here.”