John Branch and Greg Bishop, writing for the New York Times, have the latest on the Patriots under Bill Belichick. The short version is: 1) Yes, they cheat; 2) they have cheated since Belichick started in 2000; 3) this sort of cheating is not common in the NFL; 4) owners and coaches don’t want to be seen bellyaching about the Patriots; and 5) they want the league to continue investigating and for the truth, whatever it may be, to come out.
The Patriots’ pattern of illicitly videotaping the signals of opposing N.F.L. coaches began in Coach Bill Belichick’s first preseason with the team in 2000, a former Patriots player said. The information was put to use in that year’s regular-season opener against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Belichick’s debut as New England’s coach.
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According to several executives in the league, the season opener against the Jets was not the first time the Patriots had been spotted taping another team’s defensive coaches at Giants Stadium. In the final preseason game of 2006, the Patriots were caught taping a Giants defensive assistant giving signals, the executives said.
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Bill Polian, the president of the Indianapolis Colts, said: “It’s behind us. It’s time to move forward.â€
But emerging details continue to pull the league back in time. On Feb. 2, The Boston Herald reported that the Patriots might have taped a St. Louis Rams walkthrough practice the day before the teams played in the 2002 Super Bowl. The Patriots won, 20-17, on a last-second field goal.
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And that doesn’t even mention the curious headset problems opposing teams seem to have had on critical drives while playing the Patriots in Foxboro.
Wouldn’t it be over and time to move on if Belichick were fired or something? It seems like he copped to one offense and was fined and warned that if he wasn’t telling everying, there would be additional consequences. If it turns out that illegal taping was a part of most of the games, shouldn’t he get fired? I understand the reluctance of the other owners to pile on the Pats, but the Pats are the ones who continue to employ an alleged serial cheater.
All I know is I hate the expression “If you ain’t cheating you ain’t trying.”
Well, there may be a more despicable construction in public life than “Get Over It”, but I don’t have a week to search. And Polian’s not (just) avoiding public bellyaching; he’s trying (as the official spokesman for Good) to help protect a League that doesn’t want to face a tainted Super Bowl scandal.
So say it again: three innocent Americans had to return Olympic gold medals because a teammate cheated. Baseball overlooked drug cheats for the sake of ticket sales, and now Hall of Fame careers will reside outside the Hall. Basketball refs shave points, big-time college athletics are a disgrace, Lance Armstrong will never be free of suspicion, and tennis is caught in a gambling scandal that won’t go away. It’s well beyond time to just forget it.
And it’s funny how when it’s the owners and the big shots and the promoters who start getting caught all the talk about sports personalities being role models kinda ends kinda abruptly.
I also don’t like the discussions where they ask if the cheating really helped all that much anyway. If it wasn’t helpful, I think they would have stopped doing it. Also, in each of those Super Bowls, the cheating only had to turn one touchdown in each game into a field goal in order to make the Pats three-time champions, rather than this century’s Buffalo Bills.