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Let Bill Belichick Be
Hester Prynne Revisited
of TheColumnists.com
I am not sure if the big bucks penalty laid on the Boston Patriots video cheaters is strong enough, but I would inflict one more indignity on coach Bill Belichick for illegally videotaping the signals sent out from the sideline by the Jets coaches in the opening game of the season.
Call it the Hester Prynne treatment. I would make him wear a scarlet V (for Video spying) on his signature cut-off sweatshirt and civilian clothes the remainder of the season. That will be as good a reminder of his skullduggery as the $500,000 fine he suffered and the $250,000 fine plus the loss of draft choices levied on the team.
I envision Belichick walking down the street and having little kids taunting him saying, “Cheater, cheater.”
Belichick’s apologia upon being punished has all the marks of the kinds of comments that have been coming out of the White House of late. He said, “We have never used sideline video to obtain a competitive advantage while the game was in progress.” Oh, they used the contraband to watch and admire the uniforms of opponents.
His other comment is worthy of a place
in the annals of gobbledegook. He said, “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.”
Cynics might wonder as well about Patriots owner Robert Kraft
and Jets coach Eric Mangini. Kraft is often a visible figure
around the Patriots. Did this relatively hands-on owner not know
what the coach was doing? Hmm. If he did know about the cheating,
the $250,000 levied on his team is a pittance.
Mangini worked as an assistant to Belichick for several years. It was intriguing to note his non-answer when people attempted to ask him if he knew anything about the illegal videotaping of opponent’s signals when he was with the Patriots. He said that it was a “league matter.” Ah, the old league matter razzle dazzle. If I recall, onetime baseball commissioner Ford Frick used to lay off hot potato issues he didn’t want to deal with by saying “it’s a league matter.”
There is another interesting aspect of National Football League action that has to do with masochism, not chicanery. It seems to be the lot of fans of all pro football teams to have to suffer at least one excruciating loss in the service of rooting for their favorites. At some point in the season, each team will throw away a victory in some egregious manner that will have their fans moaning on Monday--and much of the rest of the week as well.
The first week of the season visited agonies on the fans of two teams: the Philadelphia Eagles and Baltimore Ravens.
The Eagles debacle stemmed from coach Andy Reid getting rid of the player, Jeremy Bloom--who had been handling punts during the exhibition season--just before the opening game. Wouldn’t you know it that the first guy put in his stead to return punts, Greg Lewis, muffed a punt that led to a Green Bay touchdown. And then to twist the knife in the guts of all Eagles loyalists, J. R. Reed, the second would-be punt returner inserted by the coach, fumbled a punt in the closing moments, which led to a game-winning field goal with two seconds left that gave the Green Bay Packers a 16-13 victory.
The reverberations over that disaster were spread over seven pages in the weekly Monday “Eagles Extra” in the Philadelphia Inquirer, on talk radio and in dinner conversations throughout the Delaware Valley. Some experts were suggesting that if the Eagles didn’t win the second game of the year, their chances to make the playoffs were close to nil. Oy, oy-oy.
The Baltimore Ravens punched their masochism card in the first Monday night game of the season. The Ravens, behind by a touchdown in the last two minutes, had the ball inside the Cincinnati Bengals five-yard line with a chance to tie by scoring a touchdown. In a wild finish replete with penalties against both teams, Baltimore had 12 chances to score inside the 5. The Ravens couldn’t do it.
Whose loss was more gut-wrenching? The Eagles punt-return fiasco or the Ravens impotence in the shadow of the goal line. It was the kind of thing that kept the fires of bitterness roaring all week.
If the fates are kind, the Eagles and Ravens
will have had their masochism week for the season. Keen students
of the sport can wonder which city will be cursed with a devilishly
cruel way of losing this week….and the next….and the
next.
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Some belated notes about the U.S. Tennis Open won by Roger Federer and Justine Henin:
I can’t imagine that the likeable newcomer, Novak Djokovic, slept well the night after he had lost to Federer. After they each held serve on up to 5-5, Djokovic broke Federer and led at 6-5, 40-0 on his serve. That is three set points. He lost all three and Federer came back to win the set and the match…TV is wonderful, but one of the trials of watching is to have to listen to the non-ending prattle by Motormouth John McEnroe. Not only on CBS, but also on USA Network where they seem to have no reins on his jabbering. My favorite lowlight: Over a shot of Donald Trump in the stands, McEnroe said, “He enjoys life.”…Federer certainly earned the shekels Nike pays him. On the night matches, the Nike trademark swoosh flowered on (1) his headband, (2) his shirt, (3-4) his wristbands, (5) his shorts, (6-7) his sox and (8-9) his shoes.
©2007 by Stan Isaacs. The Bill Belichick photo is courtesy of Wikipedia. This column first posted Sept. 17, 2007.
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