Our new Jets' writer, Erik Boland, is a mild-mannered sort, very well-behaved, modest, and earnest. 
Which is why I refer to him as a "bubbling cauldron of intensity." Beneath the Jimmy Olson veneer lies a man with a lot of stuff floating around in his brain. Which I guess explains why he got into the writing business.
Anyway, I just thought I'd mention that because Boland let Belichick and the Patriots have it over their various interviews in recent days in the wake of the latest Spygate developments. In one fell swoop of a blogpost, Boland ripped Belichick for ripping Matt Walsh, ripped Bob Kraft for ripping the Boston Herald, and then ripped Tom Brady for ripping ESPN.
Jeepers!
(Full disclosure: Part of Boland's angst may have been traceable to the fact he was "out of uniform" as the Jets' beat writer and helping Newsday's coverage of the Subway Series at Yankee Stadium last night. In case you weren't aware, media types covering baseball have massive amounts of time from before, during and after the game to not only cover the goings-on, talk to other "seamheads," as baseball writers are often referred to, and to otherwise contemplate their navels. Thus, the explosive brew of a bubbling cauldron of intensity, covering baseball, thinking about Spygate, and having a blog to put it all down. PS: He makes some very compelling and interesting points. Please read it.)
Comments (6)
Great Caesar's Ghost!
Bob, if the original rule in the bylaws was so crystal clear, why did they need to send out a clarifying memo?
If Belichick's interpretation was so blatantly wrong and he knew it, why did he have his video guys out there wearing full Patriots gear in the wide open, as he showed with additional video tapes (or do you want to add another asterisk because those might have been illegally shot too)?
Should a memo override the bylaws? He obviously didn't think so, especially when he had a Jets cameraman thrown out of Gillette Stadium for illegally taping from the exact same location the tapes we saw on Tuesday were shot from. If nothing happened to the Jets for violating the exact same "crystal clear" memo, why would Belichick take the memo seriously?
There were tapes from September with other coaches waving at the camera. This was confirmed by Belichick and Goodell. If other coaches knew about this practice and felt that it was altering the course of football history (as the ridiculous penalty would indicate), then wouldn't they have put a stop to the practice beforehand? I remember you writing about how this could affect other coach’s jobs. But obviously those other coaches didn’t think so.
There is no plausible reason to believe, after watching the edited tapes (how were those used during the game?) or listening to the comments of those involved, that the tapes were used during the games. They were used during the week as a streamlined method of scouting signals. Every team steals signals, as you are well aware. And every team changes their signals frequently. Operating under the facts that the Patriots had access to signals on video instead of a legal pad, signals that were changing anyway, please explain how this violation was so obscene to deserve the largest penalty in the history of sports.
Even though these penalties were under a different commissioner, please explain how cheating the salary cap (Denver & San Fran), thus enabling a team to bring in better players, the ones who actually win games, deserves a FAR less penalty of a 3rd round pick. According to the draft value chart, the 16th pick of the 1st round is worth 1000 points, and 190 for the 16th pick of the 3rd round. So Goodell thought that signal scouting was 5 times worse than cheating the salary cap. Seriously? And you guys said the penalties were too light?
Finally, it bothers me greatly when writers and analysts use the penalty as evidence that the penalty was serious. This one is completely on Goodell. The media, in September, started what amounted to a slander campaign against Belichick. We know you guys don't like him and we know why. You saw this as a perfect opportunity. The fact that Goodell took the media's bait makes this perhaps the biggest blunder by a league executive in the history of professional sports.
Bob, please keep in mind that videotaping signals is nowhere near the same thing as bugging a locker room, or illegaly OBTAINING the signals. They still have to be decoded. If bugging a locker room is a 10, and stealing signals with a clipboard and binoculars is a 1, videotaping them for use during the week is a 2.
Please consider again, some in the media want further penalties against Belichick and the Patriots, or wanted at the time. Therefore, you consider this violation to be more than 5 times worse than cheating the salary cap. Absolutely ridiculous.
Have a nice day.
Joe L:
You said a lot.
I hope you feel better.
I agree with a lot of what you are saying.
Belichick will not - and should not - be further penalized.
Salary cap infractions are at least as egregious. The streamlined scouting process is a very good point, one that Belichick made.
Yes, stealing signals is allowed and never discouraged, except with the videotaping caveat.
re: Joe L.'s comments --
Great Caesar's Ghost!
The Spygate takeaway seems to be the NFL is a cesspool of rules violations and Kraft and Belichick swim well in sewage.
Joe L. = Tolstoy?
WOW!
We can has and rehash Spygate until the Superbowl comes around again and it would solve nothing. The point is, BeliCheat has been outed for what he is. All NFL teams have been put on notice. There will be increased scrutiny of teams bending/breaking the rules to gain competitive advantage.
That's a good thing.
As for BeliCheat. let's see what he can do when he's forced to play by the rules.