The Power of Laundry - Bill Belichick Edition
Listed in:When Bill Belichick and the Patriots got caught cheating last weekend, several forces went into motion that, in retrospect, I should have seen coming.
1 - Patriots fans and media mobilized in defense of their team.
2 - Everyone else mobilized to alternately condemn and laugh at them.
3 - Few drew connections to their previous statements and behavior.
Let's start with anecdotes. Ben and I work in the same office with a bunch of other sports nuts, many of whom are Boston sports fans. Most of them took the position that the cheating didn't matter, that it doesn't delegitimize the rest of the franchise's run since 2001. The non-Pats fans, Ben the Jets fan especially, initially took the position that Belichick and the organization got off too easy, that such a brazen act deserved much more punishment than a fine and forfeiture of a single draft pick.
I still think that, if anything, the punishment is on the harsh side, but it's certainly fair. My view is probably colored by the Barry Bonds experience, though. Anytime anyone learns I'm a Giants fan, I get asked what I think of Bonds. What am I supposed to say? He's allegedly an a-hole mixed with the nicest desperate-for-attention laid back dude you'll ever meet. I have no idea. Which doesn't answer the question, because the question is really, "What do you think about Barry Bonds's cheating?" I tend to give answers the questioner doesn't like, such as, "Meh. He probably cheated by using PEDs. But I still cheer when he does something on the field because he wears my team's uniform, and everyone else who's ever cheated gets treated the same way by his hometown fans."
So, let's observe the collective mood in the mainstream sports media. Bill Simmons, a guy I admire for wearing his fandom on his sleeve, and a guy who once wrote he felt dirty that no one took a stand against Bonds, wrote TWO pieces that place him as a Belichick apologist.
I don't blame him at all. It's not "wrong" of him or anything like that. It is what it is. I like how he lays out the cheating in bare terms in the conversation with Aaron Schatz. What I don't like is when he resorts to the logic that people are making a big deal of it because they're looking for a reason to hate the Patriots, and the second piece is hard to stomach because of that slant. I don't care that it's written specifically for a Boston audience; the grownups in the audience can discuss truths without resorting to bullshit us-against-the-world conspiracy theorism that culminates in an accusation that the camera may plausibly have been there to try to catch Mangini stealing signals. I probably come down right where he does on how bad the cheating was, but the reaction is ridiculous and borderline irrational, with an extended rant comparing the Belicheat scandal to environmentalists' hypocrisy and the Iraq war.
Now, let's look at the St. Louis Post's Jeff Gordon, aka Gordo, writing in a chat that the NFL "took care of one of its favored franchises". I may be wrong here, but I think there's another case of high-profile cheating that may have occurred recently in St. Louis, and Gordon may have commented on it. Ha! Found it. To Gordon, with similar levels of certainty about the subjects' cheating, albeit different types of cheating, Belichick was "allowed to skate", while Rick Ankiel deserves the benefit of every doubt.
My point in bringing up these cross-sports inconsistencies is not to lambast these guys for being wrong, or anything like that, but to show that even someone who is paid to write a considered opinion of sports is susceptible to the power of laundry. Why did you defend or rip Belichick and the Patriots? Don't pretend it has anything to do with some higher moral plane. You did it because you do or you don't root for the Pats.
