"it's just hard for me to fathom anyone would do anything like that"

nb: i have no idea what this photo is about but it is the 2nd result for "cheaters" and it is awesome. it is attached to a page entitled "Intermediate Biomolecular / BioProcess Engineering (ChE 438)".

so this belichick taping scandal is still going on. now we don't just have former assistant coaches being mysterious and ultimately really sketchy and limelight-grabbing and all "look at me, i'm russell crowe in the insider and belichick is the tobacco company" about it. players are joining in too! mostly this article is a rehash of what has occurred: i still love the claim that belichick just misunderstood the rules, which is up there with roger clemens "i thought it was a ball i was throwing at piazza, not a splintered bat" excuse.

the article is interesting, though, in that it is quite a study in faffing the fuck about. on one side, you've got the john maras and the bill polians talking about how it's time to move on and everything was solved satisfactorily. on the other side, you have the coaches who were running the increasingly-lengthy list of video-taped teams out-and-out stating that this is really alarming and gross behavior, and that they don't want the image going out to the public that all coaches are stealing signals to this extent. both sides are dragging this out like man with a pay-by-pop prostitute. mike martz, coach of the ill-fated rams' super bowl team in 2002, put it best when some mentally-disabled reporter asked the insulting "they probably would've beaten your team anyway so why do you care?" question:

“For somebody to say that, it’s kind of disgusting,” Martz said. “The whole point is if they really cheated. To say he took some steroids and it did help or it didn’t help, that’s never the point. The point is, to all these high school coaches and high school kids and college kids, that if they did cheat, that’s the point.”

which is a good point! lovie smith, the defensive coordinator of the rams that season, while doing his characteristic "aw, can't we all just love each other" thing, stated that he just couldn't "fathom anyone would do anything like that," which i think is so adorable. lovie is too busy with hugs to cheat!

ultimately, if specter is actually serious about taking this to the next level, which the committee seems genuinely worried about, belichick's going to be thrown under the bus. i mean, honestly, does anyone think goodell is going to look at his options and choose "defend the most disliked, unpleasant coach in the league" over "let's not risk our anti-trust understanding"? bill's already been convicted in the league's court of significant breakage of rules; this is why he was fined $500k, and why the patriots were fined an additional $250k and a first round draft pick. if you think about it, we're talking a $2m fine here, in cash and goods. they've already openly agreed that he cheated. why are they dragging this out? why do we need to know the extent by which he cheated before they just go ahead and remove him from the league for a year? how many minutes passed after the vick guilty plea before he was banned indefinitely without pay? did they ask ricky williams how many bowls he smoked before sacking his ass?

i'm not just saying this because i'd rather not have to see his freakishly torn up visage (seriously! it wasn't that long ago that he looked like this! as an aside, that photo is the last time belichick ever smiled.) grace my screen anymore, either.