ESPN is either spineless or stupid

Over the past week or two, ESPN and most other national sports outlets have been concentrating on the Roger Clemens case. This is only natural. Roger Clemens is widely considered to be one of the greatest individual players in baseball history and has won two World Series rings with the New York Yankees in 1999 and 2000. Keep this in mind as we go on.

The Patriots "Spygate" scandal is pretty well known. The Patriots were accused by the Jets of illegally taping signals during their first matchup of 2007. After NFL commissioner Roger Goodell saw the evidence and decided that the Patriots had indeed broken the rules, he had all evidence destroyed. Imagine that. Can you think of any incriminating scandal, whether in the business world or in politics, where all evidence was intentionally destroyed by the ruling committee rather than stored for posterity or future review? The Warren Report still exists. So do the Watergate tapes. And if you think we're being overly dramatic, the Pete Rose evidence is still on record with Major League Baseball...and Pete was banned even though no evidence exists that his gambling affected his management/playing decisions; i.e. it neither gave him an advantage nor a handicap on the field.

So you may recall that just prior to the 2008 Super Bowl, a former employee claimed that the Patriots had illegally taped a walkthrough (essentially the first20 or so planned plays of the game) by the opposing Rams just before the Patriots won their first Super Bowl in 2002. Since the Super Bowl was a week away, it was picked up and overblown by the media. Then the Patriots lost, order was restored, and the media ceased to care because 18-1 is a far cry from 19-0.

But Senator Arlen Specter raised a little noise, wondering just how rampant cheating really is in the NFL, and why there were no farther-reaching consequences for the Patriots outside of money (admittedly a large but far from crippling fine to Belichick and the organization) and a draft pick. He also questioned the destruction of the evidence.
Lest we think this is a waste of our tax dollars...well, it sort of is. But look at it from this angle. The Patriots have defeated a lot of teams in the playoffs, and we'll focus on the cities or areas: Indianapolis, San Diego, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Carolina, Pittsburgh. If the other guys win those games, do not the local economies occupied by each team stand to profit in the millions of dollars, either from further playoff games or the simple reputation of having a champion NFL team? Don't these franchises all have to make multi-million-dollar decisions based on the season's final outcome, with failure to reach a championship being one of the top reasons to change rosters, coaches, and gameplans, at great cost? So isn't it unfair if one team has an advantage that the rulebook specifically dictates they should not?

So in the last 24 hours it's come out that Bill Belichick told Roger Goodell (who told Arlen Specter) months ago that the Patriots had been regularly creating illegal practice and game tapes of other teams since 2000...meaning that they had been cheating for over seven years. Here's what ESPN.com currently has on its front page regarding this:

NOTHING.

Not one sentence. Last night, you could find this information contained within another article, with the headline "Goodell: No regrets about Spygate" or some nonsense, like that was the story. Incredible. Maybe ESPN is afraid of pissing off their biggest cash cow?

The Patriots have won 3 of the last 7 Super Bowls. There is no doubt that they are the team of the decade, barring a Giants three-peat (yeah, sure.) If Belichick broke the rules for seven years, he had to think that the information he'd gained was useful. Did other teams break this rule? Possibly, but none so blatantly and stupidly as the Patriots.

If you had a good idea of what the other team was going to do in its first 3-4 sets of downs each game (which is what a walkthrough generally practices) isn't that like having a set of hints? Isn't it an advantage? So why is it not a bigger deal than baseball players using steroids...they're only one person out of a 25-man roster and if it was a league-wide problem, no one team should have had an advantage! Yet steroids in baseball are a Congressional embarrassment.

Meanwhile, in football, steroids are an afterthought and cheating by a coach is clumsily swept under the rug...and somehow it seems to be working! Where's the scandal? Where's the fury? Where is anyone who cares? Frankly, we at LPP are disgusted.

However, in all of this, there was one QB that Bill Belichick could never beat no matter how many practices he taped, no matter how many signals he stole...because you can't predict what an improvisational genius is going to do in advance!
That's right. Even Belicheat could never topple JAKE "THE SNAKE" PLUMMER. At least we'll always have that, even as the NFL refuses to investigate unless Congressmen tell them to and will never put any asterisks next to any Patriots wins and will never ban Bill Belichick for life the way baseball banned Pete Rose.

Even if you taped what he did a thousand times, you'd never see how the Snake was going to beat you until his coach...
LET PLUMMER PLAY!!!