Obsidian Potency 3.0
Patriot Games
posted Wednesday, 19 September 2007
Bill Simmons just wants to move on. TMQ thinks this could be the beginning of the end for the NFL. Who is right?
That remains to be seen, but the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. It is the media's somewhat-despicable role to leave no stone unturned in stories like these. People harangue, fret and speculate. Both columnists could be accused of myopia on the issue.
The Sports Guy can't believe how much ink has been spent on the hysteria of the issue, and wants to talk about football. He says the Patriots have been caught, punished, deserved it, and let's go on with our lives...done and done. Sorry, dude: we're not going on with anything until we figure out just how deep this goes. It doesn't matter if other teams are doing it. It doesn't matter that the Pats only got caught once. It doesn't matter how many plausible alternative scenarios you can come up with. It doesn't matter if some of these rumors and complaints are motivated by jealousy.
This kind of cheating is like gambling in baseball: it claws at the integrity of the game. It is arguably worse than steroids; in fact, it's arguably worse than any other potential kind of cheating/scandal. Electronic spying on other teams is explicitly prohibited (and this isn't the first time a team has complained about the Patriots doing it). Belichick not only ignored that edict -- he stonewalled when he got caught, claiming he misinterpreted league rules. In other words, he cheated and then he lied about it. Shouldn't there be as much outrage over the lying here as there was over Michael Vick? Yet I didn't see you protest the media sensationalism of the dogfighting story nearly as much. You acknowledge some of this, but act as if we should just move on because one contender pounded another on Sunday.
Then, Sports Guy, you do the absolute worst thing I've seen from you to date: you invoke the war in Iraq and other non-sports issues to try to 'put this incident into perspective' in the grand scheme of things. Are you kidding? Seriously, are you? Sportswriters and journalists get paid to write about sports. As far as sports issues go, it doesn't get much more serious than this. I've seen a decent amount of coverage on the former-player disability-benefits issue, so you can't hide behind that either. This is a sport where wife-beaters and alcoholic killers get to keep playing after suspensions, but dog-fighters get suspended indefinitely and the Patriots get raked over the coals for cheating. All of these issues are controversial, and their importance is debatable -- but only one of them affects the playing field of the sport itself. So despite your questionably-relevant protests, Belichick's crime against football (not against humanity...against football) IS the dominant story. And it's the dominant story for perfectly legitimate reasons.
As for TMQ, he is guilty of the opposite: he relies too much on rumors and unsubstantiated claims to make this seem more serious than it is. In fact, I take issue with one of the first lines in his most recent column: "You don't issue emergency orders backed by threats on Sunday morning of a game day, as Goodell just did regarding the New England Patriots' files of cheating information, unless the situation is a lot worse than people realize." Really? You don't? That sounds like a dangerously naive assumption to make. We're talking about a brand-new commissioner who is determined to clean up the sport and instill an increased sense of accountability. So actually, the situation may not be worse than people realize.
TMQ does well to inform the reader that, if some of the worst rumors are in fact true, then this incident could be the beginning of a huge disaster for the NFL. He's right about that. But the vast majority of his Patriot commentary is based on rumors that equal 'the sum of all fears.' I think such speculation should be bagged until we get more concrete evidence.
The Patriots spy games could be what Bill Simmons says they are, or they could just as easily grow into what Gregg Easterbrook fears. Regardless of what is unearthed in the coming weeks, we will be reminded again of how our gossip-driven media beats stories to death and jumps to conclusions without knowing most of the facts. And we'll all be a bit dumber for the experience.
That remains to be seen, but the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. It is the media's somewhat-despicable role to leave no stone unturned in stories like these. People harangue, fret and speculate. Both columnists could be accused of myopia on the issue.
The Sports Guy can't believe how much ink has been spent on the hysteria of the issue, and wants to talk about football. He says the Patriots have been caught, punished, deserved it, and let's go on with our lives...done and done. Sorry, dude: we're not going on with anything until we figure out just how deep this goes. It doesn't matter if other teams are doing it. It doesn't matter that the Pats only got caught once. It doesn't matter how many plausible alternative scenarios you can come up with. It doesn't matter if some of these rumors and complaints are motivated by jealousy.
This kind of cheating is like gambling in baseball: it claws at the integrity of the game. It is arguably worse than steroids; in fact, it's arguably worse than any other potential kind of cheating/scandal. Electronic spying on other teams is explicitly prohibited (and this isn't the first time a team has complained about the Patriots doing it). Belichick not only ignored that edict -- he stonewalled when he got caught, claiming he misinterpreted league rules. In other words, he cheated and then he lied about it. Shouldn't there be as much outrage over the lying here as there was over Michael Vick? Yet I didn't see you protest the media sensationalism of the dogfighting story nearly as much. You acknowledge some of this, but act as if we should just move on because one contender pounded another on Sunday.
Then, Sports Guy, you do the absolute worst thing I've seen from you to date: you invoke the war in Iraq and other non-sports issues to try to 'put this incident into perspective' in the grand scheme of things. Are you kidding? Seriously, are you? Sportswriters and journalists get paid to write about sports. As far as sports issues go, it doesn't get much more serious than this. I've seen a decent amount of coverage on the former-player disability-benefits issue, so you can't hide behind that either. This is a sport where wife-beaters and alcoholic killers get to keep playing after suspensions, but dog-fighters get suspended indefinitely and the Patriots get raked over the coals for cheating. All of these issues are controversial, and their importance is debatable -- but only one of them affects the playing field of the sport itself. So despite your questionably-relevant protests, Belichick's crime against football (not against humanity...against football) IS the dominant story. And it's the dominant story for perfectly legitimate reasons.
As for TMQ, he is guilty of the opposite: he relies too much on rumors and unsubstantiated claims to make this seem more serious than it is. In fact, I take issue with one of the first lines in his most recent column: "You don't issue emergency orders backed by threats on Sunday morning of a game day, as Goodell just did regarding the New England Patriots' files of cheating information, unless the situation is a lot worse than people realize." Really? You don't? That sounds like a dangerously naive assumption to make. We're talking about a brand-new commissioner who is determined to clean up the sport and instill an increased sense of accountability. So actually, the situation may not be worse than people realize.
TMQ does well to inform the reader that, if some of the worst rumors are in fact true, then this incident could be the beginning of a huge disaster for the NFL. He's right about that. But the vast majority of his Patriot commentary is based on rumors that equal 'the sum of all fears.' I think such speculation should be bagged until we get more concrete evidence.
The Patriots spy games could be what Bill Simmons says they are, or they could just as easily grow into what Gregg Easterbrook fears. Regardless of what is unearthed in the coming weeks, we will be reminded again of how our gossip-driven media beats stories to death and jumps to conclusions without knowing most of the facts. And we'll all be a bit dumber for the experience.
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