Commissioner Roger Goodell, the head of the NFL, has made a mistake by only giving Patriots head coach Bill Belichick and the Pats a pair of $250,000 fines and the lost of a draft pick or two for taping the Jets signals during the game last week. Goodell's punishment sends a weak message to a man who makes a reported $4.2 million — and is totally meaningless to a team with a payroll of $105 million. Truth is, given the high stakes of today's NFL, a team in a tough playoff game might well be willing to risk half a million to tape the other team's signals. While it's a lot more clams than you are I are likely to see this year, it's not a big price for the wealthy owners.
What Goodell should have done is simple: he should have ruled that by cheating, the Pats forfeited the game. The Pats would put a loss on their record, and the Jets would get the win. A ruling like that would be a shot heard round the league. It would send a clear message: cheating doesn't pay. The Pats would have to work harder to fix improve their record.
All right, friends, I've said it. Let the hate mail begin. Before the hate mail arrives, let me say this: I love the Pats. A buddy of mine has a big projection TV, and it's great fun to head over to his house, hang out with friends and root for Tom Brady and the gang. This year promises to be better than ever, watching Brady work with the new receiving corps. I hope he'll still let me in.
had to forfeit a game since the 1920's. Surely this is not the most egregious incident of cheating in over 80 years. Furthermore, given that the tape was confiscated at the end of the 1st quarter and the Patriots still took the Jets behind the woodshed, making the Pats forfeit this game would have been completely asinine. The Patriots broke a (stupid) rule, and they were punished pretty fairly in my mind. If Goodell had made the Pats forfeit that game, I would have never watched another NFL game again.
so there's no way the information gleaned by the videographer could've been used to any advantage during the game. Both the NFL and Belichick said that. The Pats did win that game through skill, despite the cloud of the tape hanging over them. The players earned the win.
I don't condone cheating either, and I think this punishment fits the crime.
If you cheat on a test, you don't get to keep your score if you get caught on the first question. You lose, and get a zero. I agree with the poster. If they are that good, they could overcome the loss over the next 15 games.
The only thing that would make it unfair would be if the Jests made the wildcard over another team solely on account of that “win”
Professional football is business, not elementary school. If corporate officers were committing crimes, you prosecute the officers, not all the employees. In this case, the corporate officer (Belichick) was found to have ordered the commission of the crime and he was punished accordingly. The team, meaning the corporation, was also fined as an institution. However, the players, as employees, shouldn't have the work they did on the field be taken away from them. After all, to borrow from your analogy, the players never had a chance to “look at the answers” for the test, never mind use them.
And the principal fucked up, badly. They should bear the consequences.
All that said, I hope they're pissed off enough to hang 9 TDs on the Jets in December.
And every team that has a player caught taking an illegal substance should also forfeit their games. Give me a break.
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$500k is nothing to sneeze at even if you are making 4.2mil. How would you like to lose 12% of your annual salary?
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I also think that the lose of a 1st round draft pick (or a 2nd and 3rd if they miss the playoffs) is really significant. No team has ever been hit with that penalty before.
$500k is nothing to sneeze at even if you are making 4.2mil.
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…the company running the team will pay the bill. Regardless of what the NFL says. The penalty would probably be deductable from income tax as a “cost of doing business.”
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This is one of the sillier controversies that I’ve read about. Guy waving his hands in public and it’s against the rules to record that–in public? I’m sorry, but that’s stupid.
The basic problem, however, is that technology has left the rules far in the dust in this case. It’s basically silly, in my view, to try to prevent teams from videotaping each other in an age of tiny cameras and, indeed, video coverage of whole games. I think teams should be allowed to videotape all the signals and do their best to figure them out. Signalers can try to come up with some other means of communication … like maybe letting the players make their own calls. In any event, given the status of what is essentially a foolish rule, I think the existing punishment is fair. If the Patriots had conspired to throw the game, or something like that, then a forfeit would be in order.
The punishment for intentionally throwing a game should be to win it instead.
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Intentionally throwing a game is the athletic equivalent of capital murder. As such, the penalty is athletic death, in the form of a cordial invitation never to be associated with the league again in any capacity, whether as player, coach, commentator, or otherwise. See, Jackson, Shoeless Joe; Rose, Pete.
If they had thrown the game, the appropriate penaty would be to ban the entire coaching staff from football, and, if investigation implicated Kraft, to force a sale of the team.
I agree that the penalty for intentionally throwing a game should be harsh, but why should it be worse than some other kind of cheating? Is it to ensure the integrity of sports betting?
One of the things that makes the NFL so popular and successful is that it is very well adapted to betting. More so than any other team sport. That's why you never hear of the Sox “covering the spread.” And there certainly are not so many columns devoted to the Vegas line for hockey games. The NFL would have to be insane to mess with that golden goose, for business reasons alone. So, point shaving, game throwing, and gambling are by far the biggest crimes, the punishment for which must be meted out with absolute and unyielding harshness.
Aside from the business practicality that you note, throwing a game is fundamentally different from cheating to win from the perspective of those involved in extreme competition. All sports rules are stupid and arbitrary, and part of the game– every game– is to stretch them as far as possible to your advantage. So there is a continuum that goes all the way from the chop block to bumping receivers to signal stealing in its various forms. Remember, these are all people who are hypercompetitive to a degree that would be truly unhealthy for the rest of us (That is why they all want the biggest contract, even if it puts them in a disavantageous situation. See, Rod, A-, Texas.) They are trying to do every possible thing to win all the time, and generally respct others for doing the same. For this reason, people who lose deliberately forfeit all respect and render themselves doormats. That is why Barry Bonds is a villian, but Shoeless Joe, even all of these years later, remains banned.
The Pats stole signals. As in baseball, the offense seems to key on them using a lens rather than a watcher with a chart. Forfeiting a game would be an apt penaty, but could royally screw another team that could advance over the Jets but for the Jets unearned default win. Therefore a big financial penalty and the lost draft picks are the best option. Were I commissioner, I would have given BB a few weeks' unexpected vacation time, as if for a player caught using steroids.
Banning for throwing a game is fine with me too. My only point was that that was the kind of offense for which more severe penalties were appropriate.
http://www.coldhardf…
The Poor Man:
Facemasks can kill.
Video cameras? Not so much.
My understanding is that the Ninja Studies program at the Columbia Institute of Journalism teaches you 113 ways to kill a man with a boom mike and a bic pen.
The penalties given to the Pats have been taken almost to absurd levels. At 4.2 million, Bellichek certainly makes a lot, but isn't even the highest-paid coach in the NFL – and $500,000 happens to be almost a quarter of his salary. The $500,000 is something he has to pay, not the team. And I'm not trying to say “poor Bellichek,” because he's certainly a very rich man, but an argument that the penalty wasn't enough just doesn't fly: it's the largest possible penalty the NFL can fine ANYONE. If this were the Arizona Cardinals we were talking about, there wouldn't have been a 1st round draft pick lost or $500,000 levied against the coach.
Welcome to reality: every team has been doing this. There are 80,000 screaming fans with cell phone video cameras, along with dozens of cameras looking at every part of the stadium at all moments of the game. There is no way to stop this practice from happening, regardless of whatever penalties have been thrown at the Pats or not. It has happened and will continue to happen, even if this somehow bothers you.
The only reason why the Pats were caught is because the coach of the Jets knew exactly who was behind the camera and where the camera was – since he was a former coach of the Pats from 2000-2005. This is a move by the league to give a big FU to an organization that's won a lot for the past few years, which has turned into resentment across the league. There's nothing more – or less – to this decision at all. Personally, I'm looking forward to laughing off this entire event come the Patriots' 4th Superbowl and a continuation of the dynasty at the season's end.
500k is a quarter of 2 million
for giving me an advanced on my math MCAS =p
But I agree with Ryan…Goodall took this as an opportunity to “stand up” to the glam organization in the League.
Maybe a 1/4 is closer than we all thought =p
As an aside, I wonder how this influences his taxes. Would he be taxed on the $500k he's being fined? Or is that the same as not being paid it in the first place?
Of course, there's nothing relevant to this question at all, I'm just curious LOL.
…what are the NFL rules regarding forfeiture? That is the issue, whether or not you want to address it.