This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

So this is deathly serious business, what goes on behind closed doors in postgame locker rooms, where and when a team's coaches give private speeches to their players, speeches about upcoming opponents that are intended to be kept between those coaches and players … you know, all confidential-like.

They are not meant to be broadcast to the entire world.

But as you may have heard — or seen — by now, that's precisely what Antonio Brown did Sunday after his Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Kansas City Chiefs, qualifying them to play the New England Patriots in the AFC championship game. He used his phone to stream for all to see on Facebook Live the postgame words to his team spoken by Steelers coach Mike Tomlin.

Brown violated the circle of locker-room trust, a sacred — albeit smelly — sanctuary of secrecy, where whatever happens, whether it's something said or done, is intended for their ears and eyes only. At least before those snoopy, pesky reporters are invited in after all the secrets have been told.

The receiver's phone camera blew the lid off all of that, giving the planet a bird's-eye view of the private session, transgressing league and team rules. It allowed everybody to see and hear Tomlin calling the Patriots what a whole lot of fans around the league whose teams regularly are beaten by the Pats call them on a regular basis. He called them a———s.

Oops.

Here's part of what Tomlin was recorded as saying:

"When you get to this point in the journey, man, not a lot needs to be said. Let's say very little moving forward. Let's start our preparations. We just spotted these a———s a day and a half. They played yesterday. Our game got moved to tonight. We're going to touch down at 4 o'clock in the f——-g morning. So be it. We'll be ready for their a—. But you ain't got to tell them we're coming. Keep a low profile, and let's get ready to ball like this up again here in a few days and be right back at it. That's our story."

The obvious irony to that particular passage is that the coach was telling his players to keep their heads down and mouths shut and not say anything to provoke the mighty Patriots. And then … then … that's exactly what he did, unbeknownst to him, because his own All-Pro wide receiver was live streaming the whole speech.

Since that time, all kinds of athletes and NFL players have piped in on Brown's lack of judgment, not the least of whom were those a———s in New England. Patriots wideout Julian Edelman told radio station WEEI in Boston: "That's how that team is run. I personally don't think that would be something that would happen in our locker room, but, hey, whatever. Some people like red and some people like blue. Some people like tulips and some people like roses."

Other Patriots were more to the point, essentially telling Tomlin to do anatomically impossible things to himself. Others criticized Brown for rolling on his coach.

In my years of violating the trust of coaches and players by reporting on things said in locker rooms, I've heard insiders spill much more inflammatory tidbits than what Brown's phone did Sunday. A college player, for instance, once recounted a vulgar postgame speech uttered by a respected coach that would have offended the majority of his fans, and maybe moved some of them to call for his job. It was blue and it was brutal.

But when a player rats on his coach, retelling what was said in the inner sanctum, it's not quite as explosive as actually watching a coach on camera call his coming opponent names. It's the power of imagery in a society being filled more and more with such images.

Nobody can say or do anything anymore without wondering whether they are being filmed or videoed — a reality that might help prompt better behavior, but that somehow seems disconcerting and fundamentally wrong.

The Patriots no doubt will use Brown's error as motivation against the Steelers this weekend because … no matter how accomplished a team is, even if it's at the highest of professional levels, that's what teams do to crank up the emotion, to motivate. Every player, every team finds reasons to be disrespected.

It's actually kind of funny. Brown is such a great talent, he'll face some minor consequence for his indiscretion and be done with it. And everyone will move on, maybe wiser, maybe not.

He has since apologized for letting "my emotions and genuine excitement get the best of me, and I wanted to share that moment with our fans," he said. "It was wrong of me to do."

Tomlin called Brown's actions "foolish."

And they were.

But that's the big-brother — and sometimes little-brother — world in which we live. Somewhere, somebody, even on the inside, wants to show or stream or post something that will gain him attention or followers, no matter if it's at the expense of his team. What everyone must understand is that there are indeed private statements and public ones, there are secrets and there are open revelations, and nowadays, the line between them is much more blurred than it once was.

GORDON MONSON hosts "The Big Show" with Spence Checketts weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on the Zone Sports Network, 97.5 FM and 1280 AM. Twitter: @GordonMonson.