Bill Belichick will pay $500,000. The Patriots will pay $250,000. The NFL will pay with a black eye.
The team will give up a first-round pick in the 2008 NFL draft if, as expected, it reaches the playoffs. If it falls short, it will give up second- and third-round picks.
And Belichick will be portrayed as Barry Bonds with headphones and a hoodie.
But there are differences, big differences.
Belichick was wrong for videotaping an opponent’s signals, and he should be punished. But I’m guessing he is one of about 20 NFL coaches who has a system in place for stealing other teams’ signals. Belichick’s intent — and their intent — is the same. The difference is while the other coaches take what they want and get away like pickpockets, there is a smoking gun linking Belichick to his crime.
Many teams have coaches whose game-day responsibility is to steal signals. Others dispatch scouts to their next opponent’s game so they can decode the signals and have the information ready to present the team in their game plan.
Belichick took the intelligence game too far with a video camera — but he wasn’t giving himself a discernible advantage over other sign stealers so much as he was making himself vulnerable.
It would be almost poetic if Belichick’s obsession with gaining every edge were to lead to him falling from grace in New England. But this incident should not tarnish his legacy as arguably the greatest coach in NFL history.
The difference between Belichick and Bonds is that cheating isn’t what makes Belichick the greatest.
