Goodell sends message to Pats, NFL on cheating
September 14th, 2007 | by Kevin Morris |
By
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Every morning you can find him roaming the expansive backyard of Rams Park. If
the Rams are on the pristine practice fields, then Dan Linza is on the scene,
carefully scanning the shadows, parking lots, rooftops, hillsides and gullies
and warehouse lots and loading docks that surround the team’s Earth City
training facility.
Linza is a small man with a big job. As the head of team security, he’s
constantly on the lookout for eavesdropping strangers and suspicious characters
eager to catch a glimpse of Rams practices. Sometimes he is perched on the big
grass berm with large binoculars in his hands. Other times he stalks the other
end of the field, peeking over the tree-lined fence for spies lurking in the
woods. So far, no spies have fallen into Linza’s security web, just the
occasional overzealous gawker. Every team in the National Football League has a
man like Linza, and they are on perpetual homeland security alert, which ought
to tell you one thing about life in the NFL:
Everybody in the NFL may not necessarily cheat, but everybody in the NFL still
thinks everybody cheats.
But just as there is honor among thieves, there are lines that can’t be crossed
in pro football. Clearly, based on the universal disgust we’re hearing around
pro football in reaction to what New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick has
been charged and punished for — getting caught red-handed videotaping the
defensive signals of the opposition during a game — the living legend has
violated that unwritten code of acceptable behavior.
“During the game you’re always trying to look over (to the other sideline) and
see if you can see what the guy is signaling, if there’s something special,”
said Rams coach Scott Linehan. “It’s no different than in baseball if you can
pick up the signs; it’s part of the game. But as far as having video equipment
and all that? Well, that’s like in golf, kicking a ball that is out of bounds
back in bounds. It’s just not part of the game, and we would never do it.”
I’m neither shocked nor amazed that Belichick, a man with a superb coaching
pedigree but also a creepy reputation as being quite capable of bending that
code of honor to suit his needs, would actually stoop to such devious tricks.
He has manipulated daily injury reports and played loose with the truth for
years, so what sort of leap would it be to find out that he has graduated to
high-tech spying on opponents? The only thing that shocks me is how arrogant he
was to brazenly do it out in the open during the course of his Patriots’
season-opening victory over the New York Jets in the New Jersey Meadowlands,
and in the backyard of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. Only a few months after
Goodell told everyone at the league winter meetings that this stuff had to
stop, Belichick has been found guilty of boldly defying the commish.
And for that reason alone, I’m glad Goodell lived up to his Judge Dredd image
and walloped Belichick hard. I only wish he’d hit him harder.
The half-million-dollar fine and the loss of high draft picks is strong, but it
could have — and should have — been stronger.
There is only one punishment that fits this crime:
Make the Patriots forfeit the game.
You don’t think that would deliver a message?
We’re in a sophisticated age of dishonesty in our society where students cheat
on tests by text messaging or e-mailing the results over their cell phones.
We’re also at a similar disturbing juncture in our sports society, which is
overrun by the need to bend the rules and look for an edge, any edge. We
already know how they do it with witch doctors and chemists and all their
designer drugs and masking agents.
Now we know the edge can also be found just as easily with exotic spook devices
out of a modern spy novel. All you need is the right man with the Machiavellian
instincts to pull it off, and from everything we know, Belichick could be that
guy.
It would be terribly naïve to think that the Hooded Genius is the only one
ready, willing and able to cross that line into digital mischief. Goodell
already told the coaches that he wanted this funny business to stop, and
apparently somebody didn’t listen. So now Goodell has sent a message that
clearly reinforces to Belichick and all the other potential devious high-tech
geniuses out there that his bite is as bad as his bark.
If he would have dipped into the won-loss column, that’s the kind of bite that
would have left a big ol’ mark.
