Patriot Spy Games

The National Football League put the hammer down on the New England Patriots, fining them heavily (though not as much as some would like) and taking away draft choices. All because someone on the coaching staff had the bright idea of allegedly bringing video cameras to the sidelines to film signals of New York Jets coaches during a game. This is why you see coaches hiding their faces behind clipboards. It looks stupid on TV, but it does serve the purpose of stymieing lip-readers.

Patriots coach Bill Belichick, heretofore known as the genius who led his team to three Super Bowl titles in this decade and is going for a fourth, came across as Vice President Dick Cheney in blowing off the media inquiries during his news conferences last week. Belichick's reputation might have taken a hit--in fact, some have wondered why he wasn't suspended by the NFL, but his coaching style won't change any. Not that his team's been affected by all this, as they defeated the San Diego Chargers 38-14 Sunday night.

One thing that might come from this incident is that, in the NFL's never-ending attempts to dictate what you and I are allowed to see in the name of image management, sideline reporters and cameras might become a thing of the past. (Come to think of it, the NFL sounds a lot like the Bush administration)

Just to clarify, there are sideline reporters (see Andrea Kramer of NBC, Suzy Kolber and Michele Tafoya of ESPN, among others) who give out good information on injured players and summaries of what coaches thought of the game so far, etc. But there are also those who insist on giving us the juicy details about the patches on players' uniforms, or the terrible odds a player had to overcome just to play football. And then there's Tony Siragusa, for whom we're still scratching our heads as to why Fox Sports put this guy on TV.