The local media have been in a turmoil this week about the New England Patriots’ unauthorized videotaping of defensive signals by the Jets coaches last weekend.
Sounds like sour grapes to me.
I know very little about Bill Belichick. I know he’s been the defensive coordinator or head coach for five Super Bowl wins and was semi-named as a correspondent in a divorce case.
These two pieces of data tell me the same thing: he’s someone with money and, thus, a target for those who have less.
Sports figures are supposed to be role models, but the media does a lousy job of writing about good ones. For example, you rarely – very rarely – read encomiums about Tiger Woods’ exemplary personal life, or any other famous person’s for that matter. Rather, the media obsesses on the peccadillos of a Tom Brady, whose major fault, by the way, was not felony murder but fathering a child.
Good grief.
This morning, the Boston Herald published an anonymous editorial complaining about the fact that Belichick wasn’t suspended but was merely fined half a million dollars for the taping incident. This is deemed to be an insufficient punishment for a heinous offense.
The predictions are that the Patriots will now be hated and booed by sports fans everywhere and that their record will be called into question.
Well, that may be the case. From years of watching professional sports on television, I’ve come to the conclusion that the behavior of fans sitting in the stadiums is about the worst that the human species can dig up. Providing any excuse for a mob to make a difficult job even harder is a bad business, and the disloyalty of the home town press corps only aids and abets this kind of reaction.
I’ve always thought that in professional sports, pretty much anything goes, and have seen the authorities give a wink and a nod to the most egregious behavior. That could be because the NHL was my first introduction to this world, and I saw it accepted as part of the game for second stringers to get away with crippling gifted athletes like Bobby Orr, either out of spite or for profit.
Put another way, if you and I assaulted someone in a way that is typical for the average pro hockey game, we’d be sweating blood protecting our backsides in a state or federal prison and not sulking for two minutes on a skating rink bench.
Seems to me that the rules of engagement in professional sports are about as phoney as the rules of war. Pro sports are in some respects almost as ugly a business as war.
I support any and all penalties for behavior that causes or could cause deliberate injury to players. I also support the notion that players should be punished both by law enforcement and their own professional authorities for illegal behavior off the field.
As for the rest of it: anything goes and why pretend that it doesn’t.