Oliver Willis, graciously:

I wonder if this could ever rise to the level of stripping the Patriots of their titles? At the very least I think the official record book should have a Roger Maris style asterisk.

I wonder. From Oliver’s link:

This is consistent with what the Patriots had admitted they had been doing, consistent with what we already knew,” NFL spokesman Greg Aiello told The Associated Press.

Now, Mr. Willis can afford to be gracious here, still riding high from the Redskins heroic victory last month, when they skillfully avoided drawing a game against the Pats in 2008. After last season’s debacle, there was some controversy about whether FedExField should install an NBA scoreboard or borrow the NYSE Big Board to keep track of the inevitable ass-whooping when the Patriots came to visit. (The expense could be offset by replacing the live stadium announcer with thie following 20-second tape loop: first-and-ten, Redskins … Campbell fumbles … Patriots ball … Brady steps back … Moss is wide open … touchdown! Patriots kick off …) A problem for another year.

John Cole, sadly, cannot bask in the glow of such triumphs, as the Steelers will be returning to Friendly Foxborough, MA for their regularly-scheduled beating. (Beatings which have become so regular that one begins to suspect that the Steelers actually enjoy them - however, until Ben Rothlisberger takes the field in a bondage mask, or Mike Tomlin congratulates Coach Belichick after the game with a submissive thank you, sir, may I have another? these thoughts will remain firmly in the realm of the speculative.) Generous Readers will take the following outburst with that in mind:

[quote]The list of the Walsh tapes indicates that the Patriots taped offensive and defensive coaches in regular-season games against the Miami Dolphins, Buffalo Bills, Cleveland Browns and San Diego Chargers. The team also made video of the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 2002 AFC Championship Game.[/quote]

It is personal now. We lost that game 24-17, and it is not too out of bounds to suggest that the margin of victory, one touchdown, was through cheating.

Bill Belichick- Cheater.
New England Patriots- Cheaters.

They should have their Superbowl stripped from them, as well as the AFC championship, and Belichick should get a lifetime ban.

Previous criticisms have involved trying to explain why, according to the rules of football, this makes no sense. These explanations have failed for a couple of reasons, the first being that nobody knows what the rules of American football are. I’ve been watching and playing football for a quarter century, and still not a game goes by where I don’t say “I literally have no idea what the fuck just happened there.” In the reckless days of my youth, when foreigners would ask me to explain football, I would say “well, you know rugby? It’s like that, except …” followed by 2 hours of discursive prattle, followed by everybody being more confused than when we started. Now I just say: “Two teams try to smash a ball from one end of a field to another. In between each play, there is a short episode of Perry Mason. It’s like bee-bop, daddy: if you have to ask, you’ll never know. Boo-bop-shoo-wop-bop-honk.” What this explanation lacks in explanation it more than makes up for in 1950’s popular culture references and lack of explanation. Dig it.

And really, the less time you spend with the NoFunLeague rulebook, the happier you will be. Mostly, it is concerned with the rules of evidence: who may use videotape to review a play, and under what circumstances; how long such a review may be; what length and color of sock one must be wearing during said review; and so on. The second-longest section is used to define the concept of “dancing” to quantum mechanical precision, followed by the word “BANNED!” written out in letters 50 stories high. (In football, as in bee-bop jazz and TV shows where Raymond Burr plays a lawyer, there is no dancing.) These sections are completely re-written after each season, if not each play. Nobody knows what is going on here, and anybody who pretends to know is lying, including the refs. There are also some appendices, included for completeness, which describe what to do if some kind of ball game breaks out, and these rules have some year-to-year-continuity. But this discussion, like all discussions of American football, has nothing to do with that.

I have digressed. We must now consider the second and most important reason why these explanations (of SpyGate’s inherent retardedness, not of football) have failed: you are speaking to people from another dimension. Something like the Twilight Zone, in many ways, if one were watching the Twilight Zone in a hash bar in the Bizarro World. Start with this real-world fact, undreamed-of by Mr. Cole and Willis: a camera is a device which records visual information for future reference. If you don’t understand me, try this experiment at home:

1. Look at something through a video camera. Let’s make it, for example, a big fat football coach standing in the middle of an 80,000-seat stadium during a nationally televised football game. Notice that you can see an image of that something. Notice also that the camera is recording this image of something. Think hard on the difference between these two things. Remember. It will be important later.

2. Take away the camera. Notice that you can still see Coach Fat Ass in real time. Notice that anything that you could see at that time with the camera, you could see without the camera (perhaps with an appropriately set of lenses), and that any information available to you while taping the coach is available while not taping the coach. However, be aware that you will not be able to see this image later. Because that’s what cameras do.

3. Now, put the camera back on the fat coach, and then move your eye away. Notice that you can’t see what he is doing anymore. But, thanks to the camera, you will be able to review what he is doing later. Not now. Later. In time. Which, in our universe, moves forward.

Now, if one produces a videotape of an event, it is evidence that someone made a record of this event for future, after-the-fact reference. Additionally, in addition to the 80,000 people in the stadium and the tens of millions of people watching on TV, some cameraperson was watching some defensive coach do something with his hands - information which, as it happens, would be useless to anyone in real time, which may be why nobody tries to hide it. But this is far beyond the scope of our current discussion. This is where we are in the real world.

In the Bizarro Bonghit Twilight Zone, however, “cameras” apparently have the magical ability to see things invisible to the eye, instantly decode this information and turn it into a football play, and them transmit them directly into the brains of all coaches and players on a given football team. Evidence that someone used a camera at that game is therefore evidence of gross cheating in that game, and it’s evidence which points to the kinds of cheating that saying “yeah we’ve been doing that for years”, and other Super Bowl-winning coaches saying “yeah, everyone’s been doing that for years” or the NFL sending out a league-wide memo saying “we know you are all doing this, so knock it off, and don’t you even think about dancing,” do not, because, um, because … like … oh, wow … um, cuz … like, whoa … yo, tell Rod Serling to call fuckin’ Dominos, man …

So, to review: in the real world, videotaping a pre-game practice - as was alleged, and alleged and alleged, could be evidence of cheating in a game. (Here, I wait patiently for Gregg Easterbrook to explain how the NFL has destroyed evidence of a second cameraman, perched on a nearby grassy knoll). But there is no such videotape. In a Dimension of Sight and Sound and Acapulco Gold and Shitty Local Football Teams, evidence of shit we already established happened constantly is evidence that you won the last fifty Super Bowls. Putting forth such half-baked theories in this universe, however, appears to be strongly correlated with having Tom Brady whip your team like they were his illegitimate model-spawn. It may be that football is too sophisticated, intellectually and emotionally, for certain fans. Other amusements might be more appropriate.

… “But wait!” you exclaim. “Consider this: what happens when my shitty-ass team plays the Patriots, and we break Tom Brady’s legs and win? You are going to feel pretty foolish then, I wager!” A fine point. But consider this: what happens when your shitty-ass team plays the Patriots, and you break Tom Brady’s legs, and then all the backup quarterbacks spontaneously combust? And then I have to play backup quarterback, except they don’t have any uniform that fits me, so I have to play naked on national TV and everybody in the world is laughing at my misshapen micropenis? And then you come in to quarterback, except they have no uniform for you so you have to wear the Iron Man superarmor and you break all the records in the world and are named SuperBowl MVP despite the fact that it’s still the preseason and then Gisele announces that she really loves you, and she has always really loved you, ever since you first jacked off to her picture all those many years ago? And then I fall in a big pile of poo and you live happily ever after THE END? How foolish will I feel then? Pretty foolish, pretty fucking foolish, all right. Trust me, these twin Swords of Damocles hang heavy above my head, Dear Friends, and certainly inform the circumspect character of this post.

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