Living here in New England and listening to all the talk about “Deflategate,” it saddens me to hear the level of rationalization, justification, and acceptance. Everyone saying, “It’s no big deal. Everybody does it. We would have won anyways. They played better in the second half with the inflated balls” is missing the point. They probably would have won without the deflated balls…but they didn’t. They made a conscious decision to cheat. They determined that the rules didn’t apply to them for whatever reason—arrogance, a sense of entitlement, who knows. Could Lance Armstrong have won a Tour de France without cheating? Possibly…but he didn’t. Could Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire have hit all those home runs without cheating? Probably…but they chose not to. Saying this doesn’t compare, that it was only a minor thing, that the haters are just wining about a little air in the balls, is again missing the point. It was knowingly skirting the rules to gain an advantage. If this had been the first time, it could be dismissed as an anomaly, an over-zealous coach, but it’s not the first time. It seems to be a culture of cheating, a systemic philosophy of fraud, unless you are naïve enough to believe that they happened to get caught the only two times they cheated. Just as Ndamukong Suh is labelled a dirty player and will never get the benefit of the doubt on a questionable play, Belichick’s Patriots will always be regarded as cheaters…outside of New England. Here it seems to be okay; it’s acceptable because they’re winning. Winning cures everything. If anyone was truly interested in curing it, Bob Kraft would fire Belichick and remove the cheating culture, but we all know that won’t happen. The NFL after all is a business first and a sport second. The integrity of the game is great, as long as it doesn’t interfere with making money. Belichick has brought success and lots of cash to Bob Kraft, by hook or by crook. And the NFL won’t take any drastic measures. If anything, more people will tune into the Super Bowl now to root against the cheaters, and that means revenue. So it will all blow over, maybe cost the Pats a fine and/or a draft pick, and New Englanders will teach their kids that as long as you’re winning and you can rationalize that it wasn’t that big of a deal, cheating is fine.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 01:57:30 +0000
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