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Where does Belichick rank?

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!!, Feb 2, 2015.

  1. 3_Octave_Fart

    3_Octave_Fart Well-Known Member

    Case in point.
    According to the Michelle Tafoya sideline report in this 06 first-round game at Foxboro, Jack Del Rio was upset about funny business going on with the coach-to-quarterback radio system.
    (Bill Parcells alluded to this often happening in San Francisco in Bill Walsh: A Football Life.)
    Del Rio said it was breaking down at opportune moments for New England and leading to Jacksonville penalties.
    And told Tafoya he wanted the league, then under Tagliabue, to look into it.
    This is the kind of chit that has been going on for years that nobody even talks about.


     
    Last edited: Feb 9, 2015
    RecoveringJournalist likes this.
  2. RecoveringJournalist

    RecoveringJournalist Well-Known Member

    Yeah, you hear stories about how this shit has been going on forever. I remember about 15 years ago, people were saying Shanahan and the Broncos were doing it, but if anybody complained about it, it wasn't publicly. Hell, maybe Shanahan learned it from Seifert, who learned it from Walsh... Teams do all kinds of crazy, strange shit to try to get an advantage, some of it legal, some of it not.
     
  3. RecoveringJournalist

    RecoveringJournalist Well-Known Member

    When I was covering the NFL, I was on the road and I went up to one of the conference rooms to meet one of the PR guys. We had a mutual friend who covered the other team and we were meeting him for dinner. This PR guy was one of the most mellow guys I'd ever worked with, great guy, but he saw one of the opposing teams PR guys in the hotel on the floor where the conference rooms were and he just flipped out. The guy said he was meeting someone, which certainly seemed plausible to me.

    When we got away from the hotel, I asked him, "What the hell was that about?" and he said sometimes teams send people around to see if notes get left behind and he said this team had a reputation for doing things like that.

    I don't think the guy was doing anything wrong, but it tells you how paranoid they all are.
     
  4. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    The story is that when he coached the Jets in the '80s, Walt Michaels would yell obscenities aimed at Al Davis when the Jets were in the visitors' locker room when they played the Raiders out of his conviction Davis had the room bugged.
     
  5. RecoveringJournalist

    RecoveringJournalist Well-Known Member

    I covered a game at the old Fiesta Bowl and the air conditioning in the visitors locker room (a complete dump) either wasn't working properly or wasn't working at all. It was close to 100 degrees for a September game and some of the players who I covered blamed the conditions for them playing like shit and losing. I remember interviewing a lineman after the game and he was dressed to fly back and his shirt was completely drenched.

    I remember asking someone if they thought it was done intentionally and they said, "Well, that, or this place is just a shithole."
     
  6. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    I could see Davis bugging a locker room. I could also see him trying to do it on the cheap and the bugs ending up being useless.
     
  7. RecoveringJournalist

    RecoveringJournalist Well-Known Member

    I could see him refusing to pay the bill for the guy who bugged the place.
     
  8. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    The story is legend, and I've told it before, about Charger Coach Harland Svare, after a game played in Oakland in 1972, shaking his fist at the ceiling fixture in the visitors' locker room and bellowing, "Damn you, Al Davis!"--on the assumption that the Raiders boss had the place bugged.

    It is not an apocryphal story. Dr. Arnold Mandell, the Chargers' team psychiatrist, was a witness and wrote of it in his book, "The Nightmare Season." And it was not necessarily a crazy assumption, although few teams need psychotherapy badly enough to employ their own shrink. It just speaks to the impact Davis had on opponents.

    When asked, some years later, Davis merely smiled his mysterious smile. "The thing wasn't in the light fixture" is all he'd admit.


    COMMENTARY : Davis Gets His Way Once Again - Los Angeles Times
     
  9. mateen

    mateen Well-Known Member

    In the 1982 strike year playoffs, the Jets beat the Raiders at the L.A. Coliseum; during halftime, some crackpot actually got through on the phone to the Jets' locker room, claiming to be Leon Hess, the Jets' owner. Walt Michaels went on a post-game tirade blaming Al Davis for the call, although he denied any involvement (Hold The Phone! Here Come The Jets - SI.com
     
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