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21 Responses to “Beli-cheat Scandal Heats Up”
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This is nothing that hasn’t been admitted already. Peyton can’t beat the pats, so you’re hoping Spector will do it for you.
Yeah, That they didn’t have a tape of the Rams Walkthrough I think completely deflates this story. Heck I would have been surprised if he hadn’t been taping offensive coaches. If your taping one set why wouldn’t you tape the other?
Besides as these tapes are all older, aren’t they ‘legal’? I thought the specific No-Taping rule that Belichek did violate was only put out in a memo just before last season. I’m assuming that everybody was doing this 3+ seasons ago.
Yesterday was my b-day, guess Arlen was a little late with his present. Leave it to a fellow bitter Philadelphia fan to keep this on the fire. I love it!
Look, it’s not like this was being investigated by the SEC from the start, Belichick “voluntarily” turned in the evidence to begin with; what would make someone think that the kind of guy who videotapes other teams signals would then be totally forthright in turning over all of the incriminating evidence to the investigators? It defies logic.
The investigation has been such a joke from the start and the NFL has so little interest in goring its own ox, that I’m shocked they punished him and the Pats at all.
Mike,
This was always illegal. The memo went out before last season saying they were going to be cracking down or to “really stop” or something like that.
I love the “everyone in the league is doing this” defense which is such BS. And then those same people want to act like Bellichek is just the best coach who is so much better than every coach in the league that he wills the Pats to victory.
People in the Boston media also love to downplay that AFC Championship game in which the Patriots cheated by saying that the key plays of that game were on special teams so ya know, it’s not cheating ifit doesn’t directly cause you to win that actual game.
But in the end, the bottom line is that the Giants whooped their monkey asses!! WOOOO!
I’ll admit personally I just don’t get the restriction. It’s completely legal to have a coach stare at opposing coaches and take notes but it would be illegal for him to video it. Or for that matter it seems like it would also be legal to videotape with a telephoto lens from the skyboxes.
I’d say it should be all or nothing. If they really wanted signs from being stolen they would allow radio recievers in ALL the players helmets.
Well, they just added a rule allowing one defensive player to have a radio in his helmet, to alleviate some of these problems.
i think it’s just like signs in baseball. If you can get a Rainman type guy to pick apart the other team’s signs on the fly then good for you, but if you video tape them for the next day, then that’s just too easy. Sometimes it’s not that you hate the idea of the signs being stolen it’s that you don’t want to make it so easy or you’re willing to draw what is logically an arbitrary line just to prevent people from feeling they have to spend 2 hours a day watching extra videos.
Why was andro and all these other protein concoctions legal in baseball but steroids weren’t? It’s not always logical, but cheating is still cheating.
Mike,
Maybe the Rams walkthrough tape didn’t belong to Walsh? Maybe it’s hidden somewhere in Belichick’s house? Who knows? Just because we don’t have the tape doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. If we have tapes that show that the Pats were willing to tape some opponents, you can bet your bottom dollar they were taping those opponents that had a good chance of beating them or in high-profile games (like a Superbowl).
If Pete Rose was banned for life because he bet on games, I believe Belichick should be banned for life for cheating!
Nick,
They may have just added this rule to allow a defensive player to have a radio, but I thought I remember reading that it has been brought up for discussion several times and been shot down. Naturally with a cheating scandal and an outraged fanbase this rule probably had an easier time getting it. However I don’t think the owners really care about cheating otherwise they would have voted for this last year. (where it was shot down 22 to 10)
Personally the Rainman guy argument bothers me more. How is that fair? Could 32 savants be found for that job? If not the one team that can’t find one seems like they are getting the shaft.
Why would you choose to draw the line arbitrarily in the middle? I just don’t see the difference in ’stealing’ signs via video tape or by having somebody watch your coaches be different enough to merit any outrage.
Nando,
And perhaps one of the Giants have a confidential informant working undercover on the Colts staff right now reporting on all thier practices? Has anyone checked the San Diego Visitor’s locker room for bugs? Maybe there’s one in there it might be true. Once you don’t need any evidence accusations are easy to make. Walsh was rumoured to be in posession of this tape that is why he has been in the news. The difference with the rumored St Louis Walkthrough tape is they were taping a confidential practice not a game itself (where millions are watching) that would be something much more serious in my book and something I would be on board with giving a ban to belichek for. However walsh doesn’t have it. So unless something concrete comes up end of story no new info here, I certainly am not looking to ban somebody for life on a rumor. This is a libertarian blog after all isn’t it?
The lately-repeated assertion that the Rams walkthrough allegations must not be true because it wasn’t on Walsh’s tapes is annoying.
First, Walsh’s tapes do not define the universe of the Pats’ taping; they are one non-team source for testing the Patriots’ claim that they gave over everything they had. It’s silly to think that Walsh would have emptied the Pats’ signal-stealing library.
Second, it’s sillier still to think that the Pats would even have kept a superbly incriminating tape (the highly-favored Rams practice new plays before the Super Bowl!) for 5 years - especially considering (a) the Martz-era Rams changed plays constantly, so the tape lost value immediately after the game, and (b) the AFC Pats didn’t play the NFC Rams again until 3 seasons later.
This is an issue where the non-believers dismiss the allegations for a lack of evidence, while the believers contend (reasonably so) that any cheater in their right mind would destroy evidence once it ceases to be useful.
Mike:
“Personally the Rainman guy argument bothers me more. How is that fair? Could 32 savants be found for that job? If not the one team that can’t find one seems like they are getting the shaft.”
That is just spine-crushingly silly. At least that would be a skill, just like being a naturally great coach or player. The thing is not even that though, it’s that it’s an incidental part of having signs to begin with. That a team that sends signs in football or baseball assumes the risk that no one will decode them, that is why they make them reasonably complicated. Think about it: How do you communicate with your players without running to talk to them or having a radio? Teams don’t HAVE to use signs, they choose to and they assume the risk along with that. It’s an unreasonable risk to assume that another team will video-tape them and catalogue them, and then spend hours upon hours decoding them. That’s really why it’s illegal, and though the logic is similar the line is not necesssarily arbitrarily drawn, it’s drawing it in a reasonable place.
Also, Mike,
Can you clarify. Are you debating this as an exercise in logic, or are you offering these as an actual defense of the Patriots? If the latter, then I have a single follow-up question, since clearly you must be a Pats fan: How did 18-1 taste?
GO GIANTS!
I would agree it would have been pretty silly of the patriots to keep a tape of the walkthrough so I doubt its existance as well. So it is reasonable to assume that any tape would have been destroyed by now. However I don’t stipulate that its reasonable to believe the tape existed in the first place.
However without the tape what exactly are the “‘believer’s” basing your suspicion of its existance on? As of last week there were rumours that the walkthrough was taped AND one videographer (Walsh) was saying he had some incriminating tapes. So it seemed reasonable to me that the “Believers” could connect those two events and be suspicious. Now all the “Believers” have is a rumour, Sorry if I’m not willing to ban someone from the game based on a now anoymous rumour.
Nope just an exercise in logic. I really don’t care about football. 18 and 1 was actually pretty funny, on the other hand I was also entertained by Peyton choking in the playoffs for years after all those MVP regular seasons.
So your team has a rainman skill coach and my team has a expert on the VCR they are both skills. They are both skills used to decode opposing signs. If decoding signs is legal than its just a matter of degree. Either they are both morally wrong or they are both right.
Further I thought the whole video tape rule was for taping on the field or in other designated areas. I have never seen it stated that ALL taping from ALL areas has been banned.
I’m not trying to excuse belichick here I just don’t see much difference between the levels of sign decoding.
I’m not suggesting that Belichick should be disciplined based on the walkthrough rumor at all.
And Walsh is a jerk for not clarifying sooner that he did not have the Rams tape (if he didn’t). His silence makes it that much easier for people to dismiss the rumor now.
I’m just saying that the lack of a tape doesn’t at all suggest that it didn’t happen.
It’s a stupid rule and it led to a stupid, big-nothing of a scandal.
The more stupid rules you have the more idiocy you have.
Its true in all aspects of society.
The dislike that is exhbited in these comments and by theagitator is insightful. If you can’t beat the best team, you look for anything that might be helpful to your cause, so that you can feel better. Can anyone tell me how the Patriots won 18 games last year without the use of tapes? Must have been some sort of chicanery involved, according to your way of thinking.
read it and weep, boys.
http://www.profootballtalk.com/2008/05/10/last-word-on-offensive-signals/
Hope it’s good popcorn, ’cause that’s going to be awfully boring to watch.
And now the source of the Walkthrough tape rumour has issued a retraction stating they believe that the tape does not exist:
http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/football/patriots/view.bg?articleid=1093898&srvc=home&position=0
I’d say it should be all or nothing. If they really wanted signs from being stolen they would allow radio recievers in ALL the players helmets.
Not to mention military anti-sigint frequency hopping, encryption and antijamming and IR-reflective glasses. And maybe chaff and oil-slick emitters and spikes.
That would be a game I might actually watch.