Meandering Thoughts: On Bill Belichick And Cheating

This is the NFL policy on videotaping other teams. It comes from a memo sent to all head coaches and general managers on September 6, 2006, prior to the start of last year's season: "Videotaping of any type, including but not limited to taping of an opponent's offensive or defensive signals, is prohibited on the sidelines, in the coaches' booth, in the locker room or at any other locations accessible to club staff members during the game."

The coaching staff of the New England Patriots, led by Bill Belichick, was caught two Sundays ago in the act of videotaping the signals of the New York Jets. (This was apparently not their first violation of this edict: last year, when the Belichick-led Patriots played the Green Bay Packers, a cameraman was detained and believed to be doing something similar.) They have since been punished by the commissioner of the National Football League, Roger Goodell: the team will forfeit up to two draft choices in next year's draft, the team was fined $250,000, and Belichick himself was fined $500,000. This should have, by many accounts, have been the end of things.

However, Bill Belichick all but assured that this story would be far from over. The day the penalties were announced, Belichick released the following statement:

"I accept full responsibility for the actions that led to tonight's ruling. Once again, I apologize to the Kraft family and every person directly or indirectly associated with the New England Patriots for the embarrassment, distraction and penalty my mistake caused. I also apologize to Patriots fans and would like to thank them for their support during the past few days and throughout my career. "

"As the Commissioner acknowledged, our use of sideline video had no impact on the outcome of last week's game. We have never used sideline video to obtain a competitive advantage while the game was in progress."

"Part of my job as head coach is to ensure that our football operations are conducted in compliance of the league rules and all accepted interpretations of them. My interpretation of a rule in the Constitution and Bylaws was incorrect."

"With tonight's resolution, I will not be offering any further comments on this matter. We are moving on with our preparations for Sunday's game."

To be helpful, I placed the troublesome part in bold. You see, sports fans, Bill Belichick refuses to admit that he cheated. His clear and blatant violation of the year-old policy? An incorrect interpretation.

Ultimately, this highlights the attitude that is currently causing a great deal of difficulty for the National Football League. Simply stated, Belichick might as well be imitating the cocky, balding record producer from the "Chef Aid" episode of South Park -you know, the one who'd bellow "I am above the law" while squeezing more hair gel onto his combover.

In refusing to acknowledge what he did, Belichick is doing two things - neither of which are particularly good for him.

First, he's stonewalling (think a less-serious, non-governmental version of Richard Nixon circa Watergate) - rather than admitting responsibility, he's seemingly trying to stop the amount of information that is publicly known about his actions from getting out there. He's not discussing the events - which is understandable in a way, as his primary responsibility is to prepare his football team for games. However, the way he's going about it seems practically designed to make him seem utterly and completely unlikeable - he's quickly become a football version of Barry Bonds; unapproachable, surly, and generally churlish. Bonds, at least, has never been caught red-handed, and continues to deny; Belichick's been caught and penalized and continues to deny. In the NFL, a league which prides itself on its character, this can only get increasingly worse.

Second, his antics - and they are antics, no matter how much people will try to downplay them or qualify them by saying, sans evidence,"oh, everybody does this" - is overshadowing what might be a tremendous all-time team. My personal distaste for everybody in a Patriots uniform aside, this current Patriots team might be one of the best to play in Foxboro; they made some smart moves over the offseason, buying tremendous amounts of talent on both ends of the ball to go along with Tom Brady and the other talent that already existed on a playoff team. Image is everything in this league; right now, instead of golden boy Brady serving as the team's primary focus, the klieglights of the media are focused directly at the man on the sidelines. Belichick dresses like a hobo on the sidelines, often sporting tattered sweatshirts. He looks squirrelish and distrustful; to find out that, behind the scenes, he's acting this way as well will only keep the bright lights shining onto his persona. This is not good for the Patriots; they spend the big bucks on the players partly to keep Belichick in the background.

Will this go away? I don't think so. Unfortunately for Patriots fans, the tone set in the first year and change of commissioner Roger Goodell's reign over the National Football League has been one of personal accountability and punishment; if, as it is currently being speculated, the taping of the Jets is the mere surface, then there's a lot more bad stuff coming down the pipe for Bill Belichick and the Patriots franchise.