Walsh Gives NFL 8 Tapes of Pats Cheating

[Dylan]

And the pressure is on --- They don't give a eff ... They'll take you right down...

The New York Times

Sports of The Times

A Decade of Sins Deserves a Year Out
By HARVEY ARATON
Published: May 9, 2008

What an extensive video library Bill Belichick turns out to have produced. Eight more spy tapes sent to N.F.L. headquarters for Commissioner Roger Goodell’s viewing pleasure by a former student in the New England Patriots’ film noir studies program. Who knows how many more taped over or discarded over the last eight years?

Imagine the documentary possibilities for those talented folks at NFL Films, provided Goodell hasn’t already tossed the evidence into the fireplace with Tom Brady-like precision in a reprise of his mysterious spin cycle last fall.

Now that the “totality of conduct” for which Belichick was cited by Goodell has officially expanded to the length of his tenure in New England, shouldn’t he be further punished as a serial offender, a con man who not only broke the rules but established secretly taping opponents as standard operating procedure?

“If your wife cheats on you once, maybe you can forgive her, but if she cheats on you over the course of your entire marriage, that becomes unforgivable because she has flouted the rules, shown no respect for your marital contract,” said Sharon K. Stoll, director of the Center for Ethics at the University of Idaho and the author of “Sports Ethics: Applications for Fair Play.”

“That is apparently what happened in this case, a disregard for the organization and its rules and it’s a big mess that the N.F.L. has on its hands because this coach happens to be an American icon, a man who has had a book written about him by David Halberstam,” Stoll said. “The league has to stand up and make a strong statement because the last impression it wants to leave is that this particular coach was above those rules.”

Let me digress before explaining why I believe Belichick should now be barred from coaching the Patriots for one season, on top of the $750,000 in fines and the forfeiture of a first-round draft pick levied on him and the Patriots by Goodell last fall. (The money was the equivalent of a parking ticket and the draft pick not all that punitive in a year when the Patriots also had the 10th pick, from New Orleans.)

In another context, I would gladly concede that my proposed punishment falls well short of fitting the crime. Espionage in a sport played and promoted as recreational warfare would seem to be a natural extension of the competition. Defending one’s team against it would require nothing more complicated than what a third-base coach does, disguise his signals, in full view of an entire ballpark six or seven times a week.

But these are the rules set forth by the N.F.L., enforced by Goodell and reportedly reinforced in a league memo sent to the teams in 2006. To which Belichick at the very least responded by videotaping the Jets in the 2007 season opener that touched off the so-called Spygate affair, now encapsulated in its own online entry of the same name on Wikipedia.org.

In other words: embarrassment to the league in perpetuity, courtesy of its team of the decade and reigning coaching genius.

As rumors of additional tapes circulated before the Giants crushed the Patriots’ dream of a perfect season in Phoenix in February, including one of a filming of a St. Louis Rams pre-Super Bowl practice in 2002, Goodell made a point of saying, “It was not something that was done on a widespread basis.” Already you get the idea he wants everyone, especially the crusading Senator Arlen Specter, to believe there is nothing in the newly submitted tapes that Belichick hasn’t already detailed, as if all of this was already on the table for public inspection.

The good news for Goodell is that the Patriots’ former video coordinator Matt Walsh apparently did not have the aforementioned tape that would have tainted at least one of the three Super Bowls claimed by Belichick’s Pats. But the real news here is, again, the establishment of Belichick’s cheating then (2000 to 2002), now (last season) and if we may extrapolate based on reasonable cause, in all likelihood in between.

His explanation, his word, on this matter means as much as Roger Clemens’s on family values. “There obviously has been some lying going on — ‘oh, we did it once; we misinterpreted the rules, we didn’t mean to,’ ” said Stoll, the ethicist. As a liar and a cheater, what separates Belichick on the grand behavioral plane from your basic synthetic warrior who gets suspended four games when he produces a dirty test?

Augmented by logic, the facts suggest Belichick has been cheating for almost a decade. And since replacing Paul Tagliabue, Goodell has fashioned himself the zero-tolerance commissioner, cracking down hard on those — players, that is — who would compromise the runaway popularity of the league with antisocial acts. Shouldn’t that policy be applied even more stringently to those in control?

“They need to send a message here,” Stoll said.

One year out. Then let’s see Belichick dare spy again in 2009.