Super Bowl 2008

The Game Room
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NFL rules state “no video recording devices of any kind are permitted to be in use in the coaches’ booth, on the field, or in the locker room during the game.” They also say all video for coaching purposes must be shot from locations “enclosed on all sides with a roof overhead.”

That was re-emphasized in a memo sent Sept. 6 to NFL head coaches and general managers. In it, Ray Anderson, the league’s executive vice president of football operations wrote: “Videotaping of any type, including but not limited to taping of an opponent’s offensive or defensive signals, is prohibited on the sidelines, in the coaches’ booth, in the locker room, or at any other locations accessible to club staff members during the game.”

Source: AP story on NFL.com

Does that clear things up a little?

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I said I was crying, not complaining. :wink:

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So they can still tape from the stands.

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I would wager that you have never participated in legitimate OR illegitimate taping of any kind in a football stadium, so… nope. Not empiricism.

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The only empirical observations that need to be made to form my conclusions are that no information is conferred by videotaping from the sidelines which is not already freely available by other means.

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[Matlock]
The question goes to motive, your honor…
[/Matlock]

Maybe the motive is laziness, but that’s not normally what we think of when we think Bill Belichick. Devious, clever, ruthless? Yes… Lazy? No.

Maybe he’s a victim of his own press, but he breaks the rules, and everyone is looking for the edge he’s given his team, because that’s what we think he eats, drinks and breathes. If a really lousy/inexperienced coach was caught doing it, we’d chalk it up to lazy or dumb, but he’s neither.

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As long as the camera position is enclosed on all sides and has a roof overhead, yeah.

“Hey! Down in front!” :slight_smile:

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Which conclusion you have absolutely no experience or qualification to make. You just can’t figure out what that the advantage might be, while obviously expending no energy considering *what * it might be. Even the fact that people obviously far more knowledgable and experienced on the matter felt it was necessary to pass and enforce the rule does not compel you to seriously explore what you might not have gathered from a faraway glance and a steadfast lack of wonder.

You, like so many ID proponents, are arguing from a lack of imagination and curiosity. That is not empiricism, and it’s not epistemology.

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The fact about the stands is that most teams know they can be seen from them. They take precautions accordingly. That’s why the non-example of the tipped poker hand is exactly wrong. This IS creeping in with a camera from where it’s not expected. Hence the name “spygate.”

But it’s nice to know there are folks out there ready to go to battle on behalf of the cheaters. Barry Bonds can be your poster boy.

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If the stands are considered “accessible to club staff members during the game” – that is, if you could pass the tapes to staff for analysis during the game – then obviously no, they cannot do that.

What’s next? Do you see a loophole wherein they can shoot from the stands, transmit video wirelessly to the locker room, claim that it isn’t a location physically accessible to staff, and be OK? The rules are clear: don’t use videotape during games, for any reason. Twitch if you must, but there’s no wiggle room here.

[QUOTE=…no information is conferred by videotaping from the sidelines which is not already freely available by other means.[/QUOTE]

“OK, maybe I rode a bicycle for a few miles of the marathon, but I didn’t travel any distance that I couldn’t have by running.”

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Brilliant!

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Boy, talk about thread hijackings. For me, the redirection of this to a belabored debate over Spygate and what exactly constitutes cheating is regrettable for three reasons:

  1. Dio’s making a monumental ass of himself
  2. taking the spotlight off of one of the greatest sports upsets/choke jobs [and the fodder for endless debate over that judgement] in modern times; and
  3. making it seem as if the Patriots’ cheating is a modern, Belichick-era phenomenon, whereas the truth is:

the Patriots franchise has a long, storied history of cheating and acting like asshats generally, and as far as I’m concerned they’re basically one more big cheating scandal short of a RICO prosecution. It is this history of bad behavior, along with the ugly behavior of many of their fans, that has earned this franchise so much ill-will everywhere, and certainly in the AFC East. From Miami to New York, most football fans loathe the Patriots. Dolfans, Jets fans… this is one thing we all stand united on! And you can’t chalk it up to just divisional rivalries, to a clutch of bad calls or close games narrowly lost… all rivalries and divisional histories have these, in abundance. No, what you have in New England is a franchise that has made it a point of pride to flaunt the rules, play ugly, throw snowballs from the stands*, and boast about it afterwards.

Seriously, the only other team that comes close to this disgraceful legacy is the Philadelphia Eagles. But not even the Eagles have the 1982 Snowplow Incident skeleton hanging in their locker. (Ask any Dolfan of a pre-Marino vintage, who remembers the David Woodley/Don Strock years, about that one.) Nope, the 'Pats have been flagrant bad sports and rule-benders, if not breakers, for decades.

As I mentioned much, much earlier in this thread, I grew up a Dolfan during the glory years of their early '70’s dynasty. Larry Csonka was my early childhood hero. I was imprinted from an early age to revere Shula, Griese, Little, Kiick, etc. etc. – and I’ll always be, in my heart of hearts, a Dolfan. (I still remember the team’s theme song, too!) When I was about nine, I briefly nursed the dream of growing up to be the first female punter in the NFL. (My dad, bless his heart, put in his time teaching me the fundamentals, chasing down my kicks and telling me to practice hard and who knows what can happen?)

Sure, I transferred my day-to-day fandom to the NFC’s Giants after I moved up here, and why not? I’m too big a football fan not to root for somebody, and televised Dolphins games up here are almost as rare as hen’s teeth. The Jets [key AFC East rivals of the 'Fins] were out of the question. OTOH, the Giants are a respectable, storied franchise with their own legendary history (and even one great novel, Frederick Exley’s A Fan’s Notes), and they have a generally upstanding and clean reputation.

But as much as I now love the Giants (and I do, sincerely, from Michael Strahan’s gap-toothed grin, to Jeremy Shockey’s broken leg and tattoed arm), last night I was rooting more for the Patriots to lose than for the Giants to win. It matters to me, more than I can say, that my beloved '72 Dolphins remain on that mountaintop alone… but I was becoming reconciled to the statistical inevitability of some team, some year pulling it off. I just didn’t want that team to be the New England Patriots, and especially not this 2007 team. It cheers me to know that Don Shula’s greatest achievement is not eclipsed by the loathsome Bill Belichick. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, as if there’s some cosmic justice in the world, or at least the NFL, after all!

The Pats can have their slightly-tainted 18-0 pre-SB stats; I don’t care. It’s all ashes in their mouths now, and I know, as a Miami Hurricanes fan, how bitter it is to follow a fantastic season full of great performances and close escapes, only to lose the big game at the end, especially if it’s a close game. The 2007 Pats will be remembered as the greatest team to lose the Super Bowl, period.

  • I know, some Giants fans have done that too, and shame on them for doing it. What can I say? New Yorkers and New Jerseyans, grumble grumble…
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Sorry if I missed a few posts here and there. It’s a long thread. Someone upthread mentioned something about Brady’s shoulder being a problem because of the pregame injury report? Brady has been listed as possible due to a shoulder injury for something like four years. Its a Belichik tradition. I guess it’s supposed to be clever or something.

Watching the game (or most of it to be honest, had to listen on the radio for most of the first half) I was thinking that at least this was a clean Superbowl and there wouldn’t be a lot of whining about calls. Guess I was wrong. I’m a Giants fan so until this game I was just watching the Pats games I caught as a football fan not a Pats hater. In every game I saw this year it seemed like the refs were giving every call to the Pats. Sorta like the boxing champ getting the benefit of the doubt over the contender. One of the worst noncalls I have ever seen was Phillip Rivers taking a roundhouse kick to the leg when he was going to pass. Seems to me that if the league wanted to skew the game one way or the other they would want 19-0. It would be a story that lives forever. The 72 Phins are still mentioned every year. So unless Mercury Morris paid off every official I don’t see the game being called in the Giants favor. It seemed like a clean game to me.

You are right Dio, they can film from the stands. It’s just not legal. So I’m sure the Pats are doing it. Any taping of the other team is to study formations. Filming of the signals is not. Until you get to be commisioner you don’t get to be the one who determines what an unfair advantage is. Maybe next year.

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Go ahead, omit the Bills like everyone else in this thread has. :wink:

According to Wikipedia, which I use because I feel like this story has changed so many times, the Pats were actually filming the Jets from “an on field location.” Unless this is a very funny use of “on field” that includes the stands, that may be a different kettle of fish - although filming on the field is also allowed with permission, since the Jets did it to the Patriots and were open about it.

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BION, I thought about rattling off a more comprehensive roll call of every team in the NFL whose fans hate the Patriots, but that would have just derailed my post. :smiley: Also, I honestly don’t know any Bills fans personally, unless they’re deeply closeted…

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(bolding mine)
It appears to me that the section I’ve bolded is the important part. I read this as meaning that a club is free to make videotape for the purpose of post-game analysis and future reference. What’s being disallowed is shooting video during a game to be analyzed and used later in the same game.

In theory, it would be a simple matter for a plainclothes “spy” with a video camera to insert himself into the multitude of people milling about on the sidelines, obtain the desired video, and then immediately return to his own sideline and hand it over to his own team’s coach without anybody noticing. But if such taping is done from the sidelines, it’s going to be much more difficult to get the video to the coach during the same game. There are too many people who would see and question why some guy in the stands is handing a videotape or camera to an on-the-field team staff member.

That’s my guess, anyway.

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I fail to understand the analogy. Decoding signals is not the goal of a football game.

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Trying to argue that breaking the rules is not cheating is about the stupidest thing i’ve read in a very long time. Having Tom Brady is an unfair advantage the other team doesn’t have, yet its not cheating. We don’t have to prove its cheating going by your idiotic definition, simply pointing to EVERY SINGLE DICTIONARY quite clearly proves its cheating.

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Was Terrell Owens “cheating” when he carried a sharpie in his sock? Was Jim McMahon “cheating” when he wore a headband on the field. There are rules of the game and there are bullshit NFL regulations. Spygate was the latter.

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My point, which I doubt you really missed, was that I don’t agree with terming every violation of league rules to be cheating. Things like T.O.'s sharpie, or a player badmouthing refs after a game, or someone rebroadcasting a game with implied oral consent rather than express written consent are all against league rules, but I would call none of them cheating. The argument is whether or not the NE taping fits in this category. I admit it is debatable.

I also agree with The Scrivener’s post; I am no fan of the Patriots. It’s just seemed to me that the spygate stuff has been enormously overblown for the whole season. Also, being a Chargers fan, I have found I need to be very careful that any whining I do against other teams is well-founded. I can only take so many “Complainian Complainian lolz” comments, you know. (not here, other places :))