Cheating Patriots coach faces more scrutiny

If I'm not mistaken, I think the rules state you can tape the opposing teams sidelines as long as you are in an enclosed structure, but not your teams coordinators booth, can anyone verify that for me?

 

I dunno if it's huge. How do you know someone who's a consistent fanboi on here doesn't let it bleed into their job?
It's a real thin line to be walking. Some can walk it, and others can't. I don't know how smart it is to always be doing it though. I see your point, though. I'm a fan of my alma mater but I'd never consider taking that fandom to a team I have no vested interest in other than the fact I'd write about them.

 

I mean it this way — you can be a fan on here because you're not working on here. Hopefully you're not a fanboi related to anything you cover, though.
For example, let's say you love the Yankees (shudder) but you live in California. Unless you are covering an MLB team, that really doesn't matter. You can still come on here and give Steinbrenner BJs and it doesn't affect anything.

 

Hating teams is fine, because virtually all pro and major college teams have battalions of PR flacks, sports-information foofs, and other sunshine-pumpers whose entire job it is to spew out nothing but positive "news," so if there are a lot of cynics and skeptics in the media, at least they serve to counterbalance the rah-rah crowd, and in the end, the public gets something like a balanced account.

 

Let's not stray too far off topic here.

The accusations Patriots fanboys keep tossing out at the rest of the league are getting ridiculous. One team has been caught. The Patriots. There is no evidence at all that any other team pulled the crap the Patriots pulled.

And as it was suggested above, the other teams in the NFL aren't screaming about this because they are backing the league office. That is how things usually work in the NFL.

A lot of the speculation has centered around AFC Championship games against the Steelers and the Super Bowl against the Eagles, mostly because Specter is from PA. I'm not sure what the comments from Philly have been, but I doubt we would ever see the Rooney family do anything but follow the league office's lead.

 

I don't think it would be accurate to say everyone was doing it, but I have a hard time believing the Patriots were the only team doing it.

 

Well, given a complete lack of facts, let's just run with our assumptions. :

 

I'm sorry, but I am a Patriots fan and I'm biased. Simple as that.

I don't cover the team, I don't cover the league, so I don't care. If I did, you can bet your ass I'd throw my loyalty to the team out the window. To an extent, covering them would automatically lead me to no longer rooting for them because I would lump them in with work and the fun would automatically be sucked out of it.

But, that being said, I'm trying to make clear that I know the Pats cheated. I understand that. I accept that. As a Pats fan I am not proud of it, but I understand why the punishment was handed out, and unless there's something new, I don't see why this is still a story.

The Pats cheated. They paid the price. End of story. What is new about this?

If Matt Walsh gave the league a tape that shows something new, then by all means, penalize them again. If the mythical "Rams super bowl walkthrough" tape shows up, penalize them again.

Until then, just STFU already. I think they've proved they don't need to cheat to win (They won 17 games last year after being caught taping the Jets) and anyone that says otherwise either has a gripe against the team or can't come to grips with the fac that this story is O-V-E-R. Over. Point blank. Done.

 

Did anybody consider the Herald's John Tomase may have an agenda with this story? This is the same game who wrote in '05 that Manny Ramirez had alienated every uniformed and non-uniformed employee of the Red Sox organization. Got him some big run on the talk shows (and helped him get the Pats beat).
Just a thought.

 

Or perhaps they have issues when the league office destroys evidence for no good reason. I have heard the explanation of why it was done. Complete garbage. You don't like this still being a story? Blame the NFL for handling it so badly.

 

Apparently these are tapes Goodell didn't know existed. It shows they cheated more and longer than they had admitted. Doesn't that count as something new?

 

First of all, the Ramirez story was borne out by subsequent accounts. Read Seth Mnookin's "Feeding the Monster" -- Manny was miserable that season, to the point where the organization had Bill James trying to devise ways to determine how many runs Manny's loafing had cost the team.

Second, what evidence do you have that the Ramirez story "helped him get the Pats beat"? It's not as if the Herald didn't already know who he was, seeing as how he'd previously worked there. And I can think of plenty of stories he's written that would have impressed a would-be employer much more than the Ramirez column.