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Response: A lot of misconceptions about this story that have made it a bigger deal then it truly is. Most fans believe the offense was “stealing signals.” Pats were punished for videotaping defensive signals. If it was an advantage most teams had it since “stealing” signals is legal as per Roger Goodell from 2007 said “The issue is not stealing signals, that is allowed and it is done quite widely.”

To me this story is nonsense fodder, if people were truly concerned about “cheating” it would be one thing but it’s about siding w/your team. So Pats fans like myself, defend BB & Pats while Steelers fans for ex write about “cheating.”

Acquiring signals is ok, the method from where on the field it was done was not. The media has played a large part of this story becoming bigger then it truly is, it all started when the Jets beatwriter who writes for their paper dubbed it Spygate…it sounds sinister, evil & dirty so the general public feels as though something evil happened. It should be referred to as “videogate” if anything, that is a stretch as well since the rule book allows for “permissible observation” as well. In reality this is a story about technology combined with league’s past winking culture toward espionage colliding when Roger Goodell decided to put his foot down. Plain and simple, that is all it is. The league has a lot of bigger issues to deal with right now, like the concussion issue and how to make the game safer, this is a minor side story that gets a lot of hits because for some reason the media doesn’t like Belichick and how he makes their jobs tough.

Thank you, Mangini! (Never thought I’d say that.)

Since they weren’t cheating prior to their 5th Lombardi, we’ll knock off 4 Titles from that Count.

Also, to borrow from a widely held belief from many in the Patriot Hater Nation, SF just got LUCKY as all GET-OUT in drafting Montana 82 overall at the END of the 3rd round and therefore don’t deserve any credit for winning those titles, anyway.
The popular refrain from your ilk when evaluating Belichick…

Plus, the spirit of my comment is that if you’re caught cheating once, then the ASSUMPTION is that you’ve been doing it all along- the method doesn’t matter.
Take the NY Giants for instance? You a Giants Fan, Bob?
Your team CHEATS too! GIANTS recent SUPERBOWLS=TAINTED; all asterisked UP!

Oh Yeah!!!!!

SF 49ers: Dynasty?
Carmen Policy, Dwight Clark – Salary Cap Cheaters

Penalty Affects Draft Choices
As part of the settlement, the 49ers agreed to pay $300,000 and surrender two draft choices — their fifth pick in the 2001 draft and third selection in 2002.

In addition, the 49ers agreed to recognize a commitment of $483,000 that the club’s prior ownership and management made to Jones.

ALL of their SB’s are now tainted, period.
If they did once, a logical person can only conclude that they’ve been doing it all along. That’s the logic propagated here by the PFT Hater Club

—–
@infectorman

of course if you had an ounce of intelligence you’d realize that niners had 4 lombardi trophies before salary cap was instituted. Hence, they could not have been cheating anyway.

But, by all means, don’t let facts prevent you from spewing trash.

For all the idiots who talk about this being just a social media thing, realize that Harbaugh said it and I trust his first statement was truer to his heart. Of course, let’s all dismiss that as well.

Simply put, I can’t understand Goodell’s logic because he has no logic. The guy is a public relations prisoner, just like many people in our country that lack substance and only care about perception.

I called this when it happened (about Mangini being blackballed which I think he is). I guarantee you when Goodell writes his memoirs, he’ll regret his actions regarding this too. This is not to say that the Pats shouldn’t have been punished. They did wrong by having a camera on the sidelines–and ONLY by having a camera on the sidelines. I just think it got overblown not only because of the media and the fans but because Goodell handled the situation incorrectly.

I also love how you haters point out that the Pats are 0-2 in Super Bowls since Spygate. Are you forgetting that they MADE IT to the Super Bowl? They’ve also been to the playoffs 4 out of 5 years since (including 2007). The one year they missed, they went 11-5. C’mon now. You better have something better than that!

So, what you’re saying is that Belichick gave Goodell some tapes that showed him doing something so unbelievably bad that Goodell destroyed the tapes?

ROFL!!!!!

Nice post up above. To the Steelers section, I would add also this, from the Steelers own blessed coach Cowher:
http://espn.go.com/blog/afceast/post/_/id/10084/cowher-patriots-are-team-of-decade

And, @Bozo: Biggest choke in the history of North American sports = Yankees only team ever to give up a 3-0 lead, in the ALCS, to the Red Sox, on their home turf. Grand slam!

Also… the biggest beat-down ever to clinch an NBA championship happened when the Celtics beat the Lakers by almost 40 pts in 2008. No one’s teams put their tail between the legs like Bozo’s teams!! Waaaaaaahhhhh Bozo, waaaaaaaaaa!!

Yankees > Red Sox for most of the time.

The question is, why do u believe any of us care?
Painting with a broad brush -in your case the broadest of all- doesn’t make your warped, highly biased opinions accurate.

Steinbrenner bought more championships than anyone else. Congrats George. You are the greatest.
You’ve left complete Nutcases like Bozo-the 4th grader in your wake, who has nothing better to do than tout your accomplishments from behind a keyboard as though you discovered a cure for cancer.

From Babe Ruth to Reggie Jackson, Mike Mussina to Roger Clemens and ARod –> Sabbathia –> Texieira, and all the Mercenaries in between…

They were all sold to the Highest bidder:
The ORIGINAL MERCENARY TEAM:
The New York Yankees

That was an AWESOME post! Of course it won’t sway anyone…never let the facts get in the way of an argument.

touche! Great post but I wouldn’t waste my breathe arguing with the same losers /haters that we all know who they are, hello bozo & bobhk,sj39.

As Tedy said who cares what the slappy morons post on social media. Jealousy is an ugly emotion.

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Translation:

WAAAAHHHHHH!!!! Mommy, those big bad ol’ meanies on PFT are picking on me and my favorite mercenary teams. WAAAAAHHHHH!

I’d agree that jealousy is an ugly emotion, which would explain the overall ugliness of New England sports fans, given that the New York Yankees have practically owned their Boston Red Sox for the vast majority of the last century, spawning several generations of bitter New Englanders. The resulting whining now that the shoe is on the other foot only shows that New Englanders have never had any problems dishing out the criticism but can’t take it in return. If you crybabies can’t take the heat, then get out of the kitchen.

touche! Great post but I wouldn’t waste my breathe arguing with the same losers /haters that we all know who they are, hello bozo & bobhk,sj39.

As Tedy said who cares what the slappy morons post on social media. Jealousy is an ugly emotion.

1. They never taped anyone else’s practices.
2. Teams know hand signals all the time. The NFL is OK with it.

Read this: http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2696227

“The league’s response? Pretty much a stifled yawn, since there is no rule prohibiting such film study.

“Reaction around the league office was, ‘That’s football,’ ” AFC spokesman Steve Alic said.”

3. Tainted, eh? the league is perfectly OK with the use of stolen signals. What bugs the league is videotaping on the field.

SF 49ers: Dynasty?
Carmen Policy, Dwight Clark – Salary Cap Cheaters

Penalty Affects Draft Choices
As part of the settlement, the 49ers agreed to pay $300,000 and surrender two draft choices — their fifth pick in the 2001 draft and third selection in 2002.

In addition, the 49ers agreed to recognize a commitment of $483,000 that the club’s prior ownership and management made to Jones.

ALL of their SB’s are now tainted, period.
If they did once, a logical person can only conclude that they’ve been doing it all along. That’s the logic propagated here by the PFT Hater Club

Dallas Cowboys? Dynasty?
Jimmy Johnson interview quote:
Q: How about the spying thing Jimmy. You’re a coach does that bother you what Belichick did?

JJ: Oh please. I’ve said it on our show. Eighteen years ago a scout for the Chiefs told me what they did, and he said what you need to do is just take your camera and you go and zoom in on the signal caller and that way you can sync it up. The problem is that if they’re not on the press box side you can’t do it from the press box; you have to do it from the sideline. This was 18 years ago.

Q: You think the NFL came down too hard on them?

JJ: No, no, I said it on the show. He was wrong for doing it for the simple reason that the league knew this was going on not just in New England but around the league. And the league sent out the memorandum to all of the teams saying you cannot do this. And so that’s when Bill Belichick was wrong. After he got the memorandum saying don’t do it anymore, he did it.

Q: Did you ever steal signals?

JJ: Oh in a heartbeat, yeah. Yes I did.

Q: Via video, Jimmy? Or no?

JJ: Oh yeah, I did it with video and so did a lot of other teams in the league. Just to make sure that you could study it and take your time, because you’re going to play the other team the second time around. But a lot of coaches did it, this was commonplace.

What more needs to be Said? Dallas Cowboys? Cheaters forever.

Denver Broncos? 2 Time- SB champs? Salary CP CHEATERS

By Mark Kiszla
Denver Post Staff Columnist
The diamonds in their Super Bowl rings still shine. But the NFL championships won by the Broncos have been tarnished.
After a 20-month investigation, the league ruled Thursday that Denver circumvented salary-cap rules from 1996-98, a crucial period in franchise history when the Broncos won back-to-back world titles and earned taxpayer approval for a new $400 million stadium.
The punishment for the Broncos was a fine of nearly $1 million and forfeiture of a third-round draft choice.
The shame of getting caught should be far greater.

Denver Broncos: CHEATERS forever, period.

Pittsburgh Steelers: Dynasty? Steroid infused team throughout the 70′s.
But Bradshaw then brought up late Steve Courson, his former teammate in those years.
Courson certainly used anabolic steroids, describing to Sports Illustrated in 1985 a complex regimen of Anadrol-50, Dianabol, Winstrol and Deca Durobilin.
Steve Courson recounted his story in ‘False Glory’ where he documented a real psychological (or physical) dependence on the juice. Serious stuff as the number of Steelers coming to an early demise attests (although one cannot directly link the Steeler’s early death rate to anabolic steroid use alone).
Bradshaw survived. Perhaps the legend of the Steelers won’t survive quite as untarnished as we once thought.
1970’s Steelers SB WINS ALL TAINTED.

There you have it, PFT Hater Club, THEY ALL “CHEAT”
Pick on NE all you want- all anyone has to do is a little research and you’ll find your own houses are not clean either.

NE -3
DEN -2
DAL -3
SF -5
PIT -4

17 Superbowls: ALL Tainted

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History of success? You mean the 0 Super Bowl wins since this all came out?!?
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I think he meant getting to(and coming within inches of winning both)two super bowls, an undefeated regular season, and being near the top of the standings every year. Winning a Super Bowl takes tons of skill, coaching, AND luck. This argument is so played and was never accurate to begin with. I swear man, people are so stupid.

2) Someone (Mangenius) felt like there must be SOME advantages because you didn’t want them doing it to your team because you wanted to win.

3) Every team works hard, and while it is unfortunate that Tedy has to answer questions, if they had never cheated a SuperBowl I don’t think Tedy or Rodney have TV jobs because no one would know or care about them.

4) Tainted…are you kidding me…Tainted to say the least.

5) The NFL did a great job of sweeping this under rug, but Spygate has/had (since destroyed) more tangible evidence than the “Black Sox”.

6) USC got stripped of a championship because of payments to Reggie Bush’s family so does that mean that Clay Matthews, etc… didn’t work hard? Their championship was “tainted” and even the clusterf**k that is the NCAA knew that cheating means consequences. And taking draft picks away from a team that had stockpiled (smartly) them doesn’t correct the wrong.

Everytime this topic comes up it just burns me, and I don’t/didn’t have a horse in this race. I just can’t believe that people with straight faces rationalize what is sooooo clearly cheating, and that victories achieved through this are “tainted”.

You got it confused. Someone was filming the Patriots practice. You have it reversed. Read here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/02/sports/pro-football-notebook-brady-says-ankle-is-fine.html

“Halfway through practice, Patriots’ linebackers coach Pepper Johnson noticed something in a third-floor window of a house next to the field.

“Club and league officials said a telescope was clearly visible in the window, according to a pool report, and that 15 minutes later, a person appeared at the window, and then vanished.

“Officials scanned the window with binoculars, but the person never returned.”