I’m a “squishy” football fan.
Love the sport. Love watching it and love rooting for my team. Yet I can’t help but wonder how long it will continue given the research and reality of what happens to the human body -and especially one’s brain- when participating in this sport. The reality is that we now have a bunch of very big and muscular people at the peak of physical conditioning essentially running as fast as they can into each other. How long will it be before we have an on field fatality? I hope it never happens, but I can’t help but wonder…
Be that as it may, I’m fascinated with the controversy swirling around the Patriots organization. A few years back, the organization was accused of spying on opposing teams. Last year, Patriot Quarterback Tom Brady was accused of being behind a scheme to deflate the balls he used in games and was handed a four game suspension. It appeared the punishment was a “make up” for the ineffective punishment given out for the spying done by the Patroits before, at least based on this fascinating article by Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham for ESPN:
http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/13533995/split-nfl-new-england-patriots-apart
What I find most remarkable is the attempts by Patriot fans to brush these rather severe allegations aside. “If you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying”, some quote while others attempt to diminish the importance of the examples presented. Still others will use something along these lines: “You’re just jealous of our success.”
Of course, there is no resolution here between fans and fanatics.
What I suppose almost everyone can agree on, if they look at the facts impartially, is that the Patriots have been without much question one of the best teams in the NFL ever since Tom Brady’s arrival. One can further state that they obviously work hard and are a smartly led team.
Where the debate starts and ends is with this: How much of their success is due to cheating? 5%? 10%? 30%? 50%? More? Less?
It’s an impossible thing to quantify yet for those who so quickly diminish the cheating this team obviously engaged in I would only say this: Coach Belichick and company wouldn’t be doing these things if they didn’t feel it helped them in some way.
Anyway, while on the subject of sports…
Kansas State Marching Band Made a Giant 50 Foot Penis
Perhaps its me but…what a lot of nothing. Do people really see a giant penis is this formation? Seriously?
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar….