I sometimes find myself thinking that I don’t know what to think regarding the New England Patriots and the situation that has become known as “Spygate”. If the accusations are true, it is hard for me to justify punishing the players as they apparently had nothing to do with what was going on. At the same time, if the accusations were true then look at the amount of players that were punished already by being on teams that played the Patriots who had an unfair advantage. I think the sad part to me is that the Patriots are/were a great team… I’d like to think they didn’t need to do any of this to win games.

I think this episode will hang over Bill Belichick’s career for the rest of his time in football. If it is proven that something went on, then it will show that without cheating Belichick is a non-winner in football. How can you truly be “the genius” and cheat (which it is proven he did and he admitted to it) or even feel the need to cheat. Where was his confidence in his own abilities, not to mention the confidence in his team? His argument of not understanding the rule is ridiculous too. You have a guy with a reputation for knowing the ins and outs of every football rule and situation so as to best capitalize on it, but he didn’t understand this rule? That sounds fishy to me.

I think what it all boils down to is that the NFL needs to investigate this further and see how far back and to what extent this taping occurred. If they can’t do this on their own and have to be prodded to do so by Congress, then so be it. The NFL’s reputation as a sport that is on the up-and-up is on the line. The NFL’s action involving requesting the Patriots to turn over any tapes to the league office which then burned them smells less like charred celluloid and more like a cover-up to me.