OH MY GOD, THE PATRIOTS CHEATED!!!

The following are my random thoughts on the Patriots video taping incident (I refuse to call it Patriot Video Games, Videogate, or any other retarded play on words). From the School of Best Grip Mike's Infantile Film Naming, let's call it 30 Frames Per Second Per Fat Guy With Greasy Fingers Acting Like Moe From The Three Stooges.

Given:
1) Uncle Jimbo is a Pats fan. I have been a Pats fan for a very long time.
2) There is a rule against video taping on the sideline.
3) The Patriots video taped on the sideline.
4.) As a Patriots fan, and a football fan, I believe the Patriots and Belichick deserved to be reprimanded.
5.) The Patriots and Belichick were reprimanded.

Thoughts to consider:
1.) We're not talking about spiking the other teams Gatorade, deflating the ball, or kidnapping their best player the night before the game. No one went Gillooly on Chad Pennington, he can handle that all by himself. nothing new here folks, expect the video camera. How that makes this more "offensive" (parden the pun) I just don't understand.

2.) We are talking about using technology to collect information that any one of 80,000 people at an NFL game could acquire. It's a public activity, all the Patriots did was bypass the binoculars and notepad. Did it break the rules? Yes. Should everyone outside Boston be burning hoodies in effigy, I think not.

3.) Like the democrats and health care, the NFL chose to legislate behavior rather than fix the problem. The NFL competition committee voted down a proposal to provide radio communications between defensive coaches and the defensive players on the field. The vote was 22-10, 24 votes were required to pass. The specifics of the proposal may be flawed, but the spirit of the proposal makes a lot of sense. And I can guarantee you that this proposal will pass next year.

4.) Patriot hating, like Cowboy hating before that, and 49er hating before that, had already started. Success breeds contempt. If you're in the camp of getting all worked up over this, ask yourself this: If Herm Edwards and the Chiefs, or Romeo Crennel and the Browns had done this would it still be a big deal to you?

5.) Spying....er....scouting has been a part of the game since it began. And spying....er...scouting has taken many forms. Some of them may have broken written rules, and even more may have broken some unwritten code of ethics and fair play. The fact is, it's part of the game. In my opinion, the video tape rule is flawed in it's fundamental attempt to regulate something, that is most likely beyond regulation. For every rule you write, there are dozens of loop holes that coaches and team will take advantage of.

6.) Plays, playbooks, signals will constantly be under attack. I say, secure the lines of communication and stop wasting time trying to regulate it. If I were Belichick, I'd put an ad in the paper for an autistic, K-mart underwear wearing, card-counting scout with photographic memory. And then wait for the call from the rules committee.

7.) This will not bring about the fall of the marketing machine known as the NFL as this numb-nuts suggests. However, what might bring down the NFL is all this sissified, "oh, they're cheating", he-said/she-said (my apologies for the Terry Glenn reference) finger pointing. How about we focus on what makes this sport great. Large men lining up, knocking the crap out of each other all while trying to get a funny shaped ball into the end zone.

It was so much simpler when you hated a team because of the color of their uniforms (cough....Dolphins), or because their quarterback was an egotistical rookie who looked like Mr. Ed (cough....Broncos).