Striper Talk Striped Bass Fishing, Surfcasting, Boating

All this talk of Belicheat and the Cheatriots from New York fans, many of them Jets fans by the way, is getting old... As if that has anything to do with this game. Most every team stole signals going back to Lombardi. Patriots had a dime dropped on them and got caught. Paid the price and moved on. Only two coaches ever spoke out against them. That should tell you something. Given Parcells' comments, maybe we should put an asterisk beside his Giants' SB wins....

While it is true beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Patriots cheated, the tactics of Bill Belichick are not an outlier among NFL teams by any stretch of the imagination.

In the words of Bill Parcells, "If you don't expect to have your signals stolen, you're stupid."

Former Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson has called stealing signals a "common practice." He went on to say that "A lot of other teams around the league do it."

In light of his confession, will Roger Goodell investigate Johnson's accomplishments of the '90s? Of course not, and for a few reasons, the first and most obvious being that it is old news, just like the Super Bowl that occurred years ago.

Also, any cheating done by Johnson, and more to the point, Belichick, that hasn't already been punished was done under Paul Tagliabue, who did not enforce any rule banning videotaping in the nature of what the Patriots did.

Any punishment levied by Mr. Goodell in regards to anything that occurred in 2001 (even if Walsh actually had the smoking gun walkthrough tape), is moot in that he would be acting outside of his jurisdiction anyway.

The only thing that causes Belichick's actions to run afoul of league rules is a memo sent by NFL VP of Football operations Ray Anderson prior to the 2006 season, and while it is unfortunate that Belichick chose to disregard that memo, only actions that occurred after Anderson's memo should even be looked at.

So what did we learn from this trying ordeal? Well for starters, we found out that the NFL was more corrupt as an entity then previously thought. We also found out that Belichick was just one in a litany of coaches who stole signals.