You're spot on!
Now THINK BIGGER and extrapolate for similar examples. More than, in the end, just a silly football game
That's PM material as I know most here are not up for/into that type of inquiry & exploration, certainly not on this board. Lots of parallels though
Just look around the world, global economy and geopolitics now. TONS of examples!
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mtramfan
McGinest mugged Faulk on every pay with impunity.
Nobody was called for roughing the passer for what they did to Warner. The hits after release were brutal.
The receivers - Bruce in particular - were routinely held. That's just the bought-off refs portion of it.
"Let the players play" was the controlling mantra chanted for a gullible and naive public. "There's something wrong," I said to my friends early in the game - I believe it was latinterviewed about the Patriots red zone stands said aferterward, "Oh yeah - we thought they'd run that play, and our coaches had us prepared." Those remarks quickly found their way down the Orwellian tubes and the players were im,mediately silenced. Not available for interview. They were shut up.
As Warner pointed out after, career trajectories (his and others) were changed.
And why, oh why, are we thought to be so naive as to believe that given plenty of time to do so, without any surviellance whatsoever, that Belichick hadn't copied the tapes? For as long as the coaches and teams that he had taped were in the league, he knew better what to plan against them. The leverage gained from that aspect of the cheating lasted for a generation of coaches past the Super Bowl.
I have one Belichick quote emblazoned in my memory. It has inspired a too-sizeable percentage of young people from all walks, all social strata. "If you're not cheating, you're not trying."
Thanks for the inspiration and the indelible impression you've made on American society, Bill.
And why are we to believe that a chump change fine and some mid-round draft picks that Belichick had stockpiled anyway would make the highjacked Super Bowl OK for the American public to accept? Unfortunately it worked.
The Lombardi should have been unceremoniously stripped from the Patriots and awarded to the Rams. Belichick should have been banned from the NFL for life. However, the gaming industry would then have been thrown into total uproar watching such enormous ile of wealth disappear. They would not have taken it well. And the league simply couldn't have that.
And BTW, as I recall the history, Belichick was ordered, in a grand show of pomp, to bring the tapes to the NFL office to be burned. A warranted search of Patriots headquarters and Belichick's home, vehicles, etc. was never conducted. A search warrant for any number of felonious charges, given the monstrosity of the claims in relation to the immense money generated by the game, could have been easily obtained and conducted w/o prior cover-up or notice. That is, if anyone were willing to press the charges that would have launched an investigation.
I love the sport, still, but in the years since have watched it with an increasingly jaundiced eye. As I said during that Super Bowl, there's something wrong. And it still is.
