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BY CHARLES BRICKER SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL




PHOENIX — This isn’t about reindicting Bill Belichick for his
videotaping sins, or any other forms of cheating he might have committed
in his tenure as coach of the New England Patriots.

He was judged and punished long ago by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

This is about a one-word question of some historical significance that
needs to be examined before we can put Spygate to rest, and that
question is: Why ?

Why does the best coach in the NFL, a man whose roster includes the best
quarterback, the best receiver and the best supporting cast of players,
need to cheat ?

I can’t count the number of times Belichick has deflected this subject
with the well-rehearsed line, “We’re just focusing on [fill in his next
opponent ],” so it’s clear he isn’t going to explain his malfeasance any
time soon.

Hopefully, some day he will offer an explanation, probably when he
writes his book. But how honest he’ll be when that time comes is
anyone’s guess, which means you’ll have to draw your own conclusions.

Mine is that Belichick is not alone in this. He’s one of dozens of head
coaches who have, at least until Goodell brought down his hammer, been
cheating the system over the years. Belichick’s hard luck was that he
was the first to be caught after Goodell made it clear before the season
began that the NFL was no longer going to wink at the violations.

So why did Belichick cheat ? Because that’s the culture in the NFL
today, to get every edge you can, whether by stealing an opponent’s
signals or taking performance-enhancing drugs.

You’ve often been told by coaches who rationalize athletes’ destructive
behavior that NFL players are a reflection of society as a whole. They
ought to take that one step further by explaining that they’re also a
reflection of society as a whole.

Andy Hardy doesn’t exist anymore. We’re a nation of spies, cheats and
corner cutters, and the Bush administration’s culture of secrecy and
questionable manipulation of the U. S. Constitution is the political
equivalent of what happens in the NFL.

Perhaps other teams weren’t as overt in their cheating as Belichick, but
it’s been out there for decades.

I had the advantage of sitting down with former Oakland Raiders
defensive lineman and now Fox TV analyst Howie Long, who is one of the
most cogent men to have played the game.

“If you’re morally offended by Spygate,” he said, “then you’d better be
sure no one in your organization has ever filmed an opposing team’s
sideline or tried to steal signals. I think you need to take a deeper,
darker look at the rest of the league.” I asked Long if he would agree
that Don Shula was beyond bending the rules or pushing the envelope on
stealing signals, and he did agree. But with a caution.

“That was 1972 and this is 2007,” he said. “The technology didn’t exist
then. Today, you can see everything and hear everything if you want to.
And who doesn’t want to ? Aren’t you surprised that some team’s signals
haven’t shown up on YouTube ?” The money in the game today, the
investment in players and franchises, the heavy emphasis on winning at
all costs, these are the factors that push even the most sainted of
coaches to find ways to break the rules — if not overtly, then in spirit.

Jimmy Johnson, the former Miami Dolphins coach, was recalling his days
as an assistant at the University of Arkansas.

“I took some of our defensive linemen into a building in the off-season,
when you’re not allowed to have training, to work with them,” Johnson
said. “Now, Frank Broyles [the head coach ] was a man of integrity. He
told me I wasn’t allowed to do that. Then he said he wanted a full
report on how the players were doing.” You cheat because you can. The
technology is there now. There are microphones that will pick up a
coach’s headset conversation with his quarterback from 300 yards away.
You could give a defensive tackle a highly sensitive microphone to
record a quarterback’s audibles, then sync them up later with plays on tape.

Why do you think coaches cover their mouths with play sheets when they
call a play into the quarterback ? Because every coach knows that the
club on the other sideline isn’t moral enough not to hire a lip reader.

I talked to one former player about the culture of cheating in the NFL
and he said, “Don’t you think almost every player in this league would
take steroids if they knew they wouldn’t be tested or couldn’t be caught
? I would. My job might depend on it.” What I want to see now is a coach
— Belichick or any coach — to just come out and admit it publicly — that
they’ve all done something nefarious, and that if Goodell ever puts his
hammer away, they’ll do it again.

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