Wrapping up Spygate
Final thoughts on this whole deal:
-The NFL clearly wants all this Spygate stuff to go away, and today they tried to do just that. They didn't even pretend to be interested in potentially new information--they scheduled a press conference before even talking to this Walsh guy!
-Now we know why Walsh wanted legal protection--not only did he steal tapes from the Pats, but I guess he also wanted to avoid getting in trouble for scalping Super Bowl tickets. Lame.
-It's funny that one of the tapes had closeup footage of the San Diego Cheerleaders instead of coaching signals.
-It occurred to me that even when the Pats cheat, they do it better than everyone else (except for the getting caught part). This article discusses the advantage gained from the footage. It seems that it was useful for scouting coaches and analyzing their behavior for tendencies and weaknesses. I'm pretty impressed at the attention to detail here--this implies that somewhere in Foxborough, there are detailed scouting reports of all the NFL coaches in the league.
-I'm actually a little disappointed in the sports media for not reporting this point earlier. For months, all we heard about was stealing signals at halftime. It is now pretty much confirmed that the Pats were not using the footage until after the game. No one in the media had enough imagination to think past the whole "stealing signals" thing?
-Speaking of the media, the Boston Herald issued an apology for running the initial "Patriots taped Rams before Super Bowl" story, which was then picked up by every other media outlet and talked about for months afterwards, despite not being true. That "Sorry, Pats" picture on the front page seems pretty sincere. Seriously though, I wonder what the fallout will be. Clearly the story was published not because the reporter had information others did not, but because the Herald's standards for determining credibility are lower than other media outlets. It's not hard to imagine an overzealous reporter crossing the line, but the Herald editors must also have greenlit the report. I don't think the Herald will be trying to scoop the Globe again anytime soon.
-The NFL clearly wants all this Spygate stuff to go away, and today they tried to do just that. They didn't even pretend to be interested in potentially new information--they scheduled a press conference before even talking to this Walsh guy!
-Now we know why Walsh wanted legal protection--not only did he steal tapes from the Pats, but I guess he also wanted to avoid getting in trouble for scalping Super Bowl tickets. Lame.
-It's funny that one of the tapes had closeup footage of the San Diego Cheerleaders instead of coaching signals.
-It occurred to me that even when the Pats cheat, they do it better than everyone else (except for the getting caught part). This article discusses the advantage gained from the footage. It seems that it was useful for scouting coaches and analyzing their behavior for tendencies and weaknesses. I'm pretty impressed at the attention to detail here--this implies that somewhere in Foxborough, there are detailed scouting reports of all the NFL coaches in the league.
-I'm actually a little disappointed in the sports media for not reporting this point earlier. For months, all we heard about was stealing signals at halftime. It is now pretty much confirmed that the Pats were not using the footage until after the game. No one in the media had enough imagination to think past the whole "stealing signals" thing?
-Speaking of the media, the Boston Herald issued an apology for running the initial "Patriots taped Rams before Super Bowl" story, which was then picked up by every other media outlet and talked about for months afterwards, despite not being true. That "Sorry, Pats" picture on the front page seems pretty sincere. Seriously though, I wonder what the fallout will be. Clearly the story was published not because the reporter had information others did not, but because the Herald's standards for determining credibility are lower than other media outlets. It's not hard to imagine an overzealous reporter crossing the line, but the Herald editors must also have greenlit the report. I don't think the Herald will be trying to scoop the Globe again anytime soon.
