Ethics Newsline®

BOSTON
Another ethics scandal rocked professional sports last week after Bill Belichick, the head coach of the New England Patriots — the man regarded as the mastermind of pro football play calling — was fined $500,000 for videotaping an opposing team’s sideline signals.

The team also was fined $250,000 by the NFL, and will forfeit a draft choice.

The incident came to light after the Patriots’ opening-day rout of the New York Jets. USA Today reports that a video camera wielded by a Patriots employee was confiscated after a security officer noted that it was continually focused on Jets defensive coaches as they relayed their signals along the sidelines.

As reported by the Boston Globe, the disgrace of being accused of stealing signals, an action specifically prohibited by the league, is a particularly sharp blow to Patriots fans, who lionized their Super-Bowl winning team.

The incident, notes the Globe, follows recent accusations that a Patriots player used a banned performance-enhancing drug and an incident in which the beloved Belichick allegedly shoved a photographer.

In the immediate aftermath of the revelation surrounding the surreptitious taping, fans and sports columnists began wondering if the practice had been long-standing — and whether other teams were cheated by the Patriots in the past.

Newsweek sports columnist Mark Starr ponders: “Are stolen signals at the heart of Belichick’s legendary brilliant halftime adjustments?”

“We’ve seen the coaches on the sidelines shielding their faces and trying to cloak their signals — I don’t believe I’ve ever seen Seattle coach Mike Holmgren’s mouth — but regarded it largely as a byproduct of the obsessive behavior that is the coaching norm,” Starr writes. “Now it appears they may not have been sufficiently paranoid.”

Others wonder where the line is drawn between smart, aggressive play and outright cheating.

Chicago Tribune sports reporter Melissa Isaacson notes that there is even some disparity between how different sports regard signal stealing: “Baseball seems to have a more casual attitude toward espionage. The White Sox never seemed concerned with punishment in the years they employed crafty Joe Nossek as a signs-stealing bench coach. And the late Bill Veeck feigned both ignorance and insult when asked about stationing a spy in the center-field scoreboard at the old Comiskey Park to eavesdrop on the signs opposing catchers flashed to their pitchers and tip off Sox hitters.”

“But technology,” she writes, “in the form of the video camera confiscated from Patriots employee Matt Estrella, apparently crosses the ethical line.”