Here’s one cite mentioning the NBC interview, written September 16th:
Also from that same article:
EVERYBODY “CHEATS”. Here’s a better cite for that interview, with video:
I didn’t find a cite for his Inside the NFL interview, though I only made a cursory search mainly focused on its useless homepage.
Oh yeah, as for your “evidence” of this being the stiffest penalty ever handed out to a coach, that may be the most disingenuous reasoning I’ve ever heard. Pacman Jones’ penalty was also the stiffest ever, considering he’d never been convicted of anything. Does that make him the worst? Of course not; Ray Caruth still holds that title, and as I understand it he was never sanctioned by the NFL at all.
Goodell is making a point to crack down on everything. Of course his penalties are the stiffest ever. It really doesn’t matter what the infraction is; he’s making examples of everything that comes across his desk in order to set the tone for his tenure.
You consider it foolish to call deliberate interference (if it exists) with the opponent’s communications system cheating?
No, I don’t think you’re lying… we might just have different views on whether the explanations given were sufficient. The SNF week 2 interview didn’t address the issues of what all the evidence contained and why it was destroyed at all.
One of your links has a 7 minute interview from NBC, I think from SNF week 2, and the issue of destroying evidence and not disclosing the contents was not addressed. Is there an interview where he explains that?
He did make mention of accusations of illegal micing and rumors of QB/Coach radio issues.
I was actually referring to the first rounder - any financial penalty that doesn’t add up to millions isn’t that significant to people like this. I never said that the worst penalty necesarily made it the worst case of cheating of all time - but it does imply that there was serious cheating going on, and not the very minor thing that some people blow it off as.
Actually, they already did that. Several years ago the league told the Giants the door could be open or closed, but it had to stay that way the whole game.
To restate a question I had earlier, because I wasn’t sure if I misinterpreted you - were you saying that if the Patriots did deliberately interfere with radio signals, it’s foolish to consider that cheating?
I’m making a direct comparison between signal jamming and opening the doors at the Meadowlands. VarlosZ states that the NFL went to the trouble to tell them to knock that shit off. So were the Giants cheating?
I’m trying to explain why it seems obvious to me that you have an axe to grind regarding the Patriots. You dismiss out of hand any examples of any other teams “cheating”, but everything the Patriots do is the worst thing ever. You claim multiple times that the league was silent about the swift penalties, despite the commissioner sitting down for a 7-minute long interview during the league’s premier weekly event immediately after it happened.
I’m not sure what your motivation is; maybe it’s that Belichick did nothing for the Browns during his time in Cleveland but now all of a sudden he turned the Pitiful Pats into a dynasty.
In google searches I see that the Browns are one of the teams whining about the Patriots jamming signals, so I guess that’s why you’re so obsessed with it as “cheating.”
Unless you also go after the Colts and Eagles with the same fervor as you’re going after the Patriots, I’m going to chalk it up to sour grapes.
Note that the Broncose were docked two 3rd round draft picks for the cheating that helped them win one of their Lombardi trophies. OH NOES, IT’S TAINTED!!!
It’s something I personally would probably chalk up to part of home field advantage. Whether it’s cheating or not would come down to whether or not it violated a particular rule. If, after the NFL told them to stop it (presumably citing some rule), it would become cheating if they kept it up.
It’s extremely minor, in my view, compared to something like deliberate radio jamming which would, to me, be a rather extreme form of cheating - worse than spygate, worse than using steroids, pretty bad in the grand scheme of things. For you to dismiss it as practically nothing is strange to me.
What other examples of cheating have I dismissed? You brought up quotes about everyone stealing signals, and my response was that stealing signals in some ways was legal. It’s my understanding that if you have a guy in the stands with binoculars and a notebook trying to figure out what he can, that’s fine. So when someone says “We had all their signals” it’s not necesarily cheating. Could be, of course, but not inherently.
I said they were silent (as far as I knew) about what was on the tapes and why they were destroyed. I still haven’t seen Goodell address that - the SNF interview didn’t cover it.
What am I, the team’s retarded lapdog? Are you capable of making an argument without being a dick? You’re calling me a liar, too, because I laid out my motivations earlier.
I was 10-14 during Bill’s time with the Browns and not much of a football fan. I don’t carry some sort of grudge about that. That the Browns happen to be one of the teams that mentioned communication troubles doesn’t really matter to me.
If you’d ask me a year ago who my favorite coach in the league was, I’d say Bellichick, for reasons I outlined in this post. He’s on a different level than other coaches in terms of game planning and aggression/risk taking, and I appreciate that. I don’t have a long time grudge against Bellichick or the Pats.
For that matter, my grudge isn’t even all that strong against them. I find it distasteful to root for them, but by week 16 if there’s still a chance for history to be made I may find myself grudgingly rooting for them. They’re nowhere near my most hated team.
Do you remember how this discussion started? I wasn’t prosetylzing. I wasn’t foaming at the mouth trying to convince others that the Patriots were scum. We were discussing the Colts/Pats game and a Pats fan asked why, in general, there was so much hate of the Patriots. I hadn’t said anything negative about them at that point. He seemed genuinely perplexed as to why anyone outside of a rival fan wouldn’t like them. So I tried to offer an explanation as to why I, personally, would find it hard to root for them. My reasoning was attacked and so I’ve tried to defend it - and that’s what this discussion has been about.
It’s not something I feel particularly strongly about. I certainly don’t have some long time axe to grind. You are absolutely, unambiguously wrong about my motivations, and since I’ve explained them previously, you’re accusing me of being a liar. Because of your feelings of my motivations, you’re attacking straw men - you’re attacking things you think I feel rather than things I’ve actually said, like when you accuse me of not caring about other teams cheating.
First, I’m not fervorous (is that a word?). You’ve shown much more fervor attacking me than I feel towards the Pats. I honestly don’t feel that strongly about the issue. I’m responding to defend what I’ve said, not because I want to spend all day talking about the Patriots. This all stems from someone essentially asking “why would anyone hate the Patriots?” as if there were no possible reasons.
Secondly, single instances could be legitimate equipment failure. So could multiple instances, but it becomes less likely. If the Colts and Eagles were deliberately jamming signals, then of course they’re guilty of cheating. I’ve only, personally, seen a repeated accusation over several instances over the space of at least a year made against the Patriots.
As far as your other examples - when did I ever say anything remotely like “The Patriots are the only team in NFL history to cheat”? Because that’s the argument you seem to be trying to disprove.
If it’s true, I don’t know the exact rules but it seems sort of like gray area minor cheating home field advantage stuff, like the doors at the meadowlands. If there’s a rule against it, it’s cheating. I think it’s shameful, though, that they need to augment their fair weather fans.
Nope, don’t remember that, but if they clearly broke rules then it’s cheating.
Yes, and based on things others have said I’m inclined to believe it’s true. If so, cheating.
First off, this is the second disagreement we’ve had on the boards where you were the first one to start tossing insults around. Are you capable of making an argument without using personal attacks?
And second, I do remember how this discussion started in this thread; it was when YOU brought it up out of the blue in response to nobody. It’s hard to believe your “I don’t really care” angle when you drag it into multiple threads.
Does something have to be quantified into a single word or phrase to be an insult? Your posts have been dripping with hostility and condescension. You imply that I’m a liar, and then invent some motivations for me that are so stupid that they’re insulting.
There was an earlier discussion on the subject. I think I said I’d try to find some more evidence about the claims, but didn’t end up doing that. I came across more info without looking for it, so I decided to post it in the thread that was a continuation of the previous thread.
This seems to be another thing you just can’t let go, similar to the Patriots jamming signals.
I call bullshit. Quote for me where you laid out your motivations. Don’t paraphrase or restate; I want an honest-to-god literal quote of what you said, and after the quote I want you to quote me implying you’re a liar. The less text in the quote boxes the more compelling the evidence will be.
You’ve essentially accused me of having an axe to grind, and therefore twisting evidence to support that. But that’s not true at all. The evidence has swayed my opinion on the issue. I had no previous axe to grind and even admired a lot of what they do.
I’ve been extremely clear as to my motivations for what I said. You’ve repeatedly rejected that, throw your own condescending guesses as to my motivations, and attacked straw men, repeatedly.
The quote you posted doesn’t explain in any way why you’re interpreting everything you hear in the worst possible light for the Patriots. The fact that you accept rumors and inuendo as “evidence” is mindboggling. I’m wondering about your motivations in doing that.
Do you understand what I’m saying? Here’s how the conversation has gone:
You: “I believe the rumors that say the Patriots jammed signals, despite the fact that there is no actual evidence, just accusations.”
Me: “I wonder why you believe accusations in the absence of evidence. Maybe you have an axe to grind?”
You: “Stop calling me a liar, dick. I already explained why I believe the accusations!”
You get it now, or should I use smaller words? I did not call you a liar; you have never once explained why you seem so eager to believe the worst of the Patriots. Quite the contrary, you’ve written at length as to why you wouldn’t normally do such a thing. You even were kind enough to quote it for me in your last post.
Another point I have is that signal jamming is not considered to be anything more than a minor nuisance, and yet you characterize it as “extreme” cheating. Why you think that is beyond me, but it does reinforce the appearance that you have something against the Patriots specifically.
And also, you’ve conceded (I believe multiple times) that signal stealing is perfectly fine. The only issue with the Patriots is the way they went about it. In short, your righteous indignation regarding that cheating is based solely on a technicality. (Stealing=fine. Stealing via camera=bad.) That’s not really the highest moral ground to be taking.
If you flip an honest coin 300 times and get 300 heads (which won’t happen - the odds are upwards of a quintillion quintillion quintillion quintillion quintillion to one against: at an incredibly high level of statistical certainty, you’ve got a rigged coin), then after 100,000 flips total, your expected number of heads is 50,150, since you’d expect the next 99,700 flips to be 49,850 heads and 49,850 tails. IOW, you’d expect the results of the anomaly to be roughly preserved, but (as you said next) to become proportionally less noticeable over time.
I think what you mean is, more inconsequential as a proportion of the total number of flips, and you’d be right. Even more than you realize, actually. See below:
Which would not be plausible, actually, for an honest coin.
In binomial probabilities (i.e. in situations where one of only two results can occur), it works like this: let’s say the odds of a heads are p, the odds of tails are q = 1-p, and n is the number of flips. The mean of the distribution - the expected number of heads - is np, and the standard deviation is sqrt(np*q). A 95% probability interval around the mean extends 1.96 standard deviations in either direction, and a 99% interval, 2.575 sd’s.
So if the coin is honest (p=q=0.5), the 95% and 99% intervals extend .98sqrt(n) and 1.238sqrt(n) to either side of n/2. IOW, with n=100,000, there’s only one chance in 100 that you’ll have a number of heads outside the [49,609, 50,391] interval.
I’m not sure what you’re saying here. The trend of getting more heads than tails didn’t reverse itself: you wouldn’t expect more tails than heads subsequently. The only trend that ended was that of the invariability of heads for the first X flips, and that simply ended; it didn’t reverse itself in the sense of producing a similar streak of consecutive tails.
But the initial streak of heads is still so improbable, regardless of what happens afterward, that the only reasonable conclusion IRL is a rigged coin. Even if the coin behaves normally for the next million flips, a streak of even 50 consecutive heads, let alone 200 or 300, is astronomically improbable. For instance, the odds against a streak of 50 consecutive heads with an honest coin taking place anytime during a million consecutive flips, is still upwards of a billion to one against.
You are still saying that an honest coin/die/roulette wheel will ‘remember’ in some fashion its recent results, and any result that has recently come up unusually often will happen less often in the future than the straight odds dictate.
This is false.
False.
Where’s your mechanism? All you’ve got is a feeling, AFAICT:
If I’ve already flipped that coin several dozen times, getting nine heads in a row at some point won’t strike me as exceedingly anomalous, and I’ll even shrug my shoulders if the 10th heads comes up. (If I flip a coin 100 times, I’ve got a 1 in 11 chance of 10 consecutive heads somewhere along the way. Hardly astronomical.) But if the first nine flips I see are all heads, I’ll assume a rigged coin until proven otherwise.
I like how you’ll claim that you never insulted me, and that I started insulting you when I called you a dick. Because you don’t use a specific word or phrase that could be easily identified as an insult, I guess that means you’ve been nothing but civil and wonderful.
We’re not talking about convicting the Patriots in a court of law. We’re talking about sports fandom… who you root for, who you root against.
I don’t believe 100% that the accusations and rumors are true, I don’t have hard evidence of that. I believe that based on the circumstances - the win at all costs mentality they play with, Bellichick’s willingness to try to exploit every edge, cheap shots/deliberate attempts at inflicting injury, already convicted of deliberately breaking the rules - those things, by the way, are enough to justify not rooting for a team in itself - that there’s probably some truth behind the many more accusations/rumors I’ve heard about the Patriots (even going back before spygate). Given that, I have a hard time rooting for them. That’s all I said. This all fundamentally (originally) boils down to someone asking why other people dislike the Patriots and me attempting to offer some reasons.
Again, this is sports fandom. I don’t like the cowboys for sillier reasons - the institutional arrogance and when the Browns and Dallas traded picks this year Dallas fans were total dicks talking about how they just secured next year’s #1 overall pick (HA! assholes). Do I have an axe to grind there?
You did imply I’m a liar because I’ve laid out my motivations in their entirety, and you’re saying there’s something I’m hiding, that there’s some secret reason I’ve yet to lay out that’s motivating me. You’re still trying to figure out why I have an axe to grind, when I’ve repeatedly said that I really don’t.
This is bizarre to me. I don’t really know how to explain to you why this seems like a big deal to me if you don’t already think it is. Radio communications are critical to the modern NFL. If one team has them while the other doesn’t, that’s a huge advantage. Having radio usage go out at critical points during a game could easily be the difference between a win or loss. It’s not a Patriots thing, I’d be sickened if my team were caught jamming radio signals.
That you’re trying to turn my statement that radio jamming would be really severe cheating into evidence of my axe to grind against the Patriots seems like evidence that you have an axe to grind with me.
It’s more like not breaking the rules=fine, breaking the rules=bad. The Patriots did it repeatedly. The NFL intervened and said that it’s against the rules, and to stop it. They didn’t stop. They kept knowingly breaking the rules. There’s not a much more clear definition of cheating.
Jamming radio signals is exactly analagous to crowd noise. All it does is make it marginally more difficult to get your plays called. That’s it. Every team practices working without the headsets every week, and every team is completely prepared to not use the headsets at any time. Look at the Colts / Patriots game; the Colts got to use their headsets all game, while the Patriots were unable to after the third play from scrimmage for the rest of the game. Or the Bears / Eagles game, where the headsets went out for the entire final 90-yard game-winning drive.
If your assessment were correct, neither the Patriots nor the Bears would have had any chance to win those games.
This is the internet-egghead attitude that drives me crazy. It seems like more of a baseball attitude, though I give baseball stat-geeks more credit than that. It’s just so…weak. It’s the antithesis of what football is about, with its connotations of nerdy rules-lawyering.
I didn’t say it was impossible to win without radio communications, but it’s certainly harder. You can’t seriously say that one team having radio communications and the other not having them isn’t an advantage. It’s not analogous to crowd noise - that’s an open, encouraged part of football, whereas radio jamming is secretive, discouraged, and unfair. I can’t think of many things you could do in football that would be worse in terms of cheating. I wonder what a team could do to earn your disapproval - stomp orphans in the locker room as a pregame ritual?
I don’t really care about the spygate issue that much in and of itself, personally. But it does indicate an institutional willingness to exploit and break rules. You’re trying to make it out to be a technicality that’s not really cheating. It’s not as if the rules were vague, the Pats thought they were in the clear, and then got screwed on a technicality. The NFL approached them and said “what you’re doing is violating rule such and such. Stop it.” and they blatantly disregarded that. They knew the rule and they deliberately chose to break it - pretty much the definition of cheating.
Combine that with the cheap shotting, rumors of further cheating, and all that, and is it such a crime that I, gasp, don’t feel all that good rooting for the Patriots?