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Blogs Gambling on Defense (Sports) Belichick: Cheating the Fans by Gabe Grossman | Belichick: Cheating the Fans by Gabe Grossman |
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| Written by Gabe Grossman | |
| Monday, 17 September 2007 | |
It bothers me that he has stonewalled the media beyond the bland apology he put up after the NFL decided that he had violated league rules. I can’t begin to imagine how he thought his actions were appropriate and that it was merely a difference of opinion on interpretation that motivated Roger Goodell to punish the Patriot’s organization. With the release of the Jets video showing that they had developed a system that could match up each defensive signal with the pre- and post-snap Polaroids by panning to the scoreboard showing the time on the clock, down and yardage it is clear that they could use the information on the tapes to cue Brady into where the defense would be weak or where a blitz might be coming from. How could Belichick think that trying to obtain this advantage would be acceptable? Or did he simply think it wouldn’t be caught?
Tom Brady’s play against a tough Charger’s defense showed that he could tell his line where to make blitz pick-ups and knew where weaknesses were in a secondary without getting any help from a sideline cameraman, but the cheating still tarnishes Belichick in my mind. I think the league’s penalty was a slap on the wrist, especially after they handed out a 4-game suspension to a Dallas assistant less than a month ago for using a banned substance to help his diabetes without telling the league. Though $500,000 fined to Belichick personally and $250,000 to the team as well as losing a first round pick is significant, Belichick will hardly notice the hit to his bank account and the Patriots are astute at selecting talent in later rounds making a first round pick marginally relevant. Whether the punishment was lightened because the NFL wanted to brush the matter under the rug as quickly as possible is up for debate, but it shows the fans that they didn’t take the infraction too seriously.
The whole situation is really one that leaves a cloud over Belichick’s success with the Patriots. Everyone knows he didn’t fare particularly well before coming to New England and its impossible how much this spying was intertwined with the turnaround. Beyond that I begin to wonder what else is he willing to do to win games, making accusations that he forced concussed players to return to games all that much more believable. Honestly the matter is still difficult for me to get my head around and go back and forth as to what difference it made, but I think Belichick should provide a greater explanation of what happened. I think he owes the fans of the NFL that much as I’m sure many are like me and still feel cheated. Comments
(5)
I guess he follows the saying, "if you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'!" One interesting observation about the cheating is Charlie Weiss sorry coaching job at Notre Dame. Was he really that good of an assistant at New England or are they just cheaters? Now that he can't cheat in college, he sucks as a coach and should be fired asap. Ty Willingham would have been fired!
I think Ty Willingham was fired more because of the desire to hire Charlie Weiss than because of his poor performance. I think it was the wrong decision at the time, as Willingham had clearly done well recruiting, demonstrated by the performance of the players he brought in under Weiss. But to be fair to ND, they're definitely in a rebuilding year, even though they got the number one qb recruit, he was never thought to be ready to start. Losing Darius Walker, who was supposed to be their key offensive weapon this year didn't help either. Through in a relatively tough schedule to start the season compared with what they normally play and I think we won't know anything about how bad Weiss is till the end of the year. If he winds up losing to Army, I'll be a believer that he needed the help of something to figure out NFL defenses.
While in large part I agree with your sentiments, I feel they are somewhat misdirected.
Although this might be my anti-Patriots bias talking, I agree that Belichick tainted himself and his legacy due to his recent spying actions. While I don’t believe that he always cheated during games, or even that they seriously affected their recent winning seasons and super bowl victories, I do think this was not the first time the cheating occurred (its hard lend credence to the belief that it was a coincidence that the Jets and Eric Mangini were the ones to "discover" the cheating) and it did give the Patriots some, however slight, competitive advantage. However, I have a problem with the argument that Belichick owes "fans of the NFL" in this situation. I have to admit, if I found myself in Belichick's situation I would do the exact same thing. Admit behind closed doors the truth to those people you do have a contractual responsibility to such as the Patriots organization (i.e. the owner Bob Kraft) and the NFL what exactly was going on, make up a bullshit excuse to give to the public as to why you thought you were acting completely aboveboard (misinterpreting the rules), issue an insincere, vague apology and try to move on as quickly as possible (as helped by trouncing all upcoming opponents and changing the storyline with each impressive victory). From my point of view Belichick's responsibilities are, in no particular order, to the NFL, the Patriots organization and the Patriots players. While most of the time these responsibilities also coincide with the interest of both the Patriots fans and NFL fans, sometimes, as in this case, they do not. Attempting (and most likely failing) to look at the situation pragmatically, each group that I would argue Belichick has some type of responsibility towards would likely not be served by publicly disclosing the extent of the cheating. To put it simply, the more details as to the cheating and its extent are made public, the worse his players (also seen as cheaters), the organization (ditto), and the NFL (cant control its employees) looks. Fortunately for Belichick, both his interests and those groups' interests he has a responsibility towards are aligned ultimately leaving the road he has taken as the best road possible. All of these reasons for Belichick's actions however do not excuse the actions of two groups that I feel do owe a responsibility to NFL fans; the Patriots organization (i.e. Bob Kraft) and the in particular the NFL. Both the individual organizations within the NFL and the NFL as a whole implicitly guarantee to its fans that the games that are conducted occur on a level (and un-videotaped) playing field (for gambling and other assorted reasons). Both groups have been quick to come down on Belichick's actions without assigning any portion of the blame to themselves and without letting any details into the public. As far as the Patriots organization is concerned, whether or not it is true that Kraft knew of the cheating that was occurring is largely irrelevant from my point of view. What does matter is that it occurred on his watch and fans that he charges to watch his team play, whether on television or in person, watched game(s) where his team had an advantage prohibited by the rules. Thus, while Belichick might not owe the fans an explanation, I feel that the Patriots organization does. The arguments made against the Patriots organization apply tenfold to the NFL. At least the Patriots and Bob Kraft have an excuse that disclosing the details of cameragate would not help their club in the future and therefore their responsibility to their fans to open their files is outweighed by their responsibility to do the best they can (within the rules of course) to win. Goodell has no such excuse as he is supposed to be neutral. His refusal to discuss the actual details of the case has been largely ignored by the media in its rush to throw out a judgment on whether he was too harsh/lenient in his punishment of Belichick and the Patriots. Thus, if anyone "owes" the fans, the NFL does, but unfortunately it is too busy assigning blame to accept any of its own responsibilities and failures in this matter.
I think the reason that the video was made public was due to the NFL, unlikely someone from the Patriots let it out, and I think the NFL is doing what it can to disclose things as they get the information, but only Bill Belichick and his staff (who he controls the hiring and firing of to a large extent) know the extent of what he did. And I disagree that he owes a different duty to fans than a team or the NFL does. That's possibly what drives me crazy about professional sports more than anything else, everyone in them owes their success and livelihood to the fans and their support otherwise the leagues would not exist. They should feel a duty to their fans who watch the NFL, who buy tickets and merch and often pay for the stadiums that teams play in. Yeah Belichick is trying to be successful by winning with any means necessary, but he's clearly crossed the line into betraying the game of football in a way that he should also answer to fans for.
On the ND issue I was thinking the same thing about Charlie Wies. He only won with Ty Willinghams players and is looking real suspect right now. Yea he is rebuilding but so was Ty Willie when he got fired. Also Romeo Cernell has struggled with the Browns. When I heard about spygate I started to put all those pieces together including the fact that Bill Bellichick struggled with the Jets and the Browns and started to think that maybe those few years were just a function of his well planned cheating. I hear every coach saying everybody does it and its not that big of a deal but I can't ignore those other factors of his past struggles. I also can't ignore that Tom Brady couldn't even win the starting job at Michigan and so how he became a MVP qb always confused me. Spygate presented me with the perfect opportunity to draw my own conclusions. I also thought about the fact that when Sabab coached with Bellichick he said they never did that. Taht was when Bellichick struggled but by the time Manginenius came on they started to do it which is of course how he knew to watch for it. By this point Bill Belly had become a winning coach and considered one of the best ever, but in my mind I'll always have these lingering questions about what he would have done without the videos and what else he may have done that we will never konw about. I almost feel like we need some asterics next to their super bowl victories to make me sleep better at night.
And I do agree that he owes the fans an apology because he has taken away some of my faith in the game of football. I watch it with a little bit of scepticism now because of his actions. He owes me an apology for that much if not just for the fact that he may have beaten teams that I was cheering for on an audibe at the line of scrimmage that may have occurred courtesy of his cheating ass video tapes. If Mike Vick had to apologize for his actions which indirectly affected football then hell yea Bill Belly should have to stand up and apologize for tainting the game. Copyright 2007. All Rights Reserved.       |
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| Last Updated ( Monday, 17 September 2007 ) |
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