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Belichick beats out McCarthy for AP 2007 NFL Coach of the Year

Spygate shmygate.
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vignette.bmpCarlos44ec - ...and Bob's your Uncle!
01/03/2008 @ 02:36:27 PM
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Someone in the comments section of that article already posted something about Spygate, see the post bu gunzaan. That's how I feel.
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scott.jpgScott - If you aren't enough without it, you'll never be enough with it.
01/03/2008 @ 07:11:40 PM
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If someone gets caught cheating, they shouldn't be awarded something that may have been enhanced by the fact that they cheated. What were the writers thinking?!?
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jeremy.jpgJeremy - Super Chocolate Bear
01/03/2008 @ 11:08:16 PM
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Maybe they just came to the realization that the "cheating" really wasn't that big of an offense. In my opinion the large penalties are more about making an example out of what happened than it is because the NFL thought it was an egregious offense.

They didn't break into Jet's HQ at night and ransack the place for their game plan, they just recorded something that was being broadcast to the public that would be of marginal use, at best, to the offending team. By the time they deciphered the footage enough to be able tell what was going on the game would be nearly over and they would be figuring out what's happening too late to relay that information anywhere. The best they could maybe do with it is say "on 3rd and long they blitz a lot" but they can get that from the normal game tape.

No, it wasn't right, but I guarantee there are bigger offenses going unnoticed. Now if they were busted radioing in mid play commentary to Tom letting him know to step up or "Randy's open" that would be another story.

In my mind this is cheating in-so-far as much as Tivoing the game itself is.

The Packers technically violated a pretty major rule with some hefty penalties (paying/betting each other for keeping Adrian Peterson under 50 yards) yet nothing happened with that. You're moving into "get tossed from the league forever" territory when you start talking about betting on/in games, especially ones you play in. I don't think anything SHOULD happen mind you, but if you are going to whine at least be fair about it, otherwise you're just whining because he won the award the same year he just happened to be penalized for a stupid inconsequential type thing that goes on all the time.

Players get fined for not having their socks pulled up in this league, should they not be eligible for MVP in the same season they get busted with their socks around their ankles?
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Jeremy edited this 2 times, last at 01/03/2008 11:11:20 pm
matt.jpgMatt - 3875 Posts
01/04/2008 @ 05:36:15 AM
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Jeremy Wrote - 01/03/2008 @ 11:08:16 PM
they just recorded something that was being broadcast to the public that would be of marginal use, at best, to the offending team.

Jeremy Wrote - 01/03/2008 @ 11:08:16 PM
In my mind this is cheating in-so-far as much as Tivoing the game itself is.


I know when I watch the game, my favorite part is when they zoom in on the defensive signals before every play, so we at home can learn them too.
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scott.jpgScott - 6225 Posts
01/04/2008 @ 07:31:48 AM
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Jeremy Wrote - 01/03/2008 @ 11:08:16 PM
Players get fined for not having their socks pulled up in this league, should they not be eligible for MVP in the same season they get busted with their socks around their ankles?


Clearly the same thing as stealing opposing players signals.

As far as the Packers thing goes, this has happened before with other teams and other sports (Tori Hunter)and it generally seems like honest mistakes. I hardly see this is the same thing. The Pats (Bellichick being the responsible party because he's the coach), they found (and is why they fined him), knowingly did something that was unethical and could have directly affected the outcome of a game. Pardon me for distinguishing between two very very different cases.

Either way, the award really doesn't matter, and I actually had no idea that McCarthy was next in line until after I made my first comment. The point is, if you get caught flat out cheating (which is what happened to the Patriots), people (especially the writers who vote on things like this) should do something to prove a point. I mean the baseball writers left McGwire out of the hall of fame based on a suspicion of wrong doing. A suspicion. Here, there is actual proof and the NFL writers turn a blind eye.
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IMG_3063[1].jpgjthompto - 209 Posts
01/04/2008 @ 07:32:57 AM
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Even if you throwout the whole cheating thing, Belichick had the most talented team in the league. he should have gone 16-0 cause any loss would have been an upset. I think this award should go to a coach who leads a team beyond expectations, like McCarthy in Green Bay. Some other canidates would be Romeo Crennel in Cleveland, Jack Del Rio, even Jeff Fisher.
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pyzamOmgWtf.jpgJfk10intex - My computer is better than yours!!!!
01/04/2008 @ 07:38:21 AM
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agreed.... with the guy up on top
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jeremy.jpgJeremy - As Seen On The Internet
01/04/2008 @ 09:48:26 AM
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Matt Wrote - 01/04/2008 @ 05:36:15 AM
Jeremy Wrote - 01/03/2008 @ 11:08:16 PM
they just recorded something that was being broadcast to the public that would be of marginal use, at best, to the offending team.

Jeremy Wrote - 01/03/2008 @ 11:08:16 PM
In my mind this is cheating in-so-far as much as Tivoing the game itself is.


I know when I watch the game, my favorite part is when they zoom in on the defensive signals before every play, so we at home can learn them too.


Well, in terms of what it would gain for you it's pretty much the same thing. The only thing this could gain for you is if you had someone on your staff with a good enough memory to be able to recognize those signals in real time the next time you play a team, and even then it's not clear to me you could get any valuable information to someone on the field in time. If your team is too lazy to ever change their signals then, like a professor who's reused the same test for years, you can still complain about the cheating, but you made it awfully easy on the team.

Also, Belichick did say he was unaware that they weren't allowed to do that, you might not believe him, but you'd have to grant him the same "honest mistake" clause. Most of the Packers players knew what they were doing was wrong because one person who didn't spilled the beans and the rest of the team played dumb when questioned about it.

I really don't see this as an ethical issue, those signals are being made out in the open and are fair game, in my opinion.

Did you know Tony Dungy and Jeff Fisher may face collusion charges? I'm sure not a lot of people heard about it, I actually couldn't even find the story on ESPN anymore. This is at least as big of a deal, though still not a big deal. Furthermore, is the action itself a bigger deal or not based on whether or not the NFL decides to punish them?
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Jeremy perfected this at 01/04/2008 9:56:18 am
jon.jpgJon - many posts
01/04/2008 @ 09:58:21 AM
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jthompto Wrote - 01/04/2008 @ 07:32:57 AM
Even if you throwout the whole cheating thing, Belichick had the most talented team in the league. he should have gone 16-0 cause any loss would have been an upset. I think this award should go to a coach who leads a team beyond expectations, like McCarthy in Green Bay. Some other canidates would be Romeo Crennel in Cleveland, Jack Del Rio, even Jeff Fisher.


Yeah, but from the other end, I'm sick of the coach of the year being the "most improved team" award or "team that outperformed what we thought" award. There should be two awards in that case. The player who is deemed most improved or comeback player doesn't earn the MVP. You earn it by being the MVP. Obviously coaching's completely different, and having two awards would probably be stupid since determining whether one coach is actually better in a given year is mostly guesswork anyway. Which is sort of the point. It's all guesswork. Plus, it would mean more to say a team "outperformed expectations" if expectations meant anything at all in the first place. I mean, how many times is this situation caused by good coaching and how many times is it caused by poor predictions?

Anyway, the only easy and accurate way to measure coaches is over a career, and even then you don't always get a clear picture.

Maybe they should just give out an award to any coach who has proven he's an elite coach that year. So, coaches like Dungy and Jeff Fisher and Belichick would have already earned theirs years ago. Holmgren would have earned his previously too. And Joe Gibbs obviously. Shannahan too. But probably no one would have earned that status this year, so maybe they could have a series of awards. The previous guys have all worked their way to the elite level, whereas guys like Wade Phillips and Jon Gruden and Jack Del Rio have earned another "good coaching" point that maybe moves them up to a category higher than they were previously in. Andy Reid probably deserves to be in the elite level too.
Or maybe they should just give out like twenty awards with more decriptive names. Gruden would get the "good enough to save your job this year" award. But he'd have to share it with Crennel. Belichick would get the Phil Jackson award, also known as the "You certainly did a good job, but we can't tell how good since a monkey might be able to coach this team, but maybe it couldn't" award. Wade Phillips and Mike Tomlin would get the "good job not ruining the team you inherited, in fact you may have even improved it" award.

Back to the question at hand, I think Belichick deserved it. He went 16-0. If it's so easy, more people would do it. I think the team obviously had first place on paper, but you can't assume something like an undefeated season. I could be way off, but it seems he has a huge impact on the way the players all approach the game and the way they play. I think it's that kind of thing that turns them from really good to undefeated.

He broke the rules, he got punished, he probably lost some votes for it. But the media members were often among his toughest critics, so it's possible some of those same critics still viewed it as small compared to his accomplishments. I don't know. Personally, I like the idea of cheaters not winning an award, like last year with Merriman, but I don't put this quite in that kind of category, just based off of feeling, so I'd probably vote for him.
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jon.jpgJon - 1 bajillion posts
01/04/2008 @ 10:27:30 AM
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Jeremy Wrote - 01/04/2008 @ 09:48:26 AM
If your team is too lazy to ever change their signals then, like a professor who's reused the same test for years, you can still complain about the cheating, but you made it awfully easy on the team.


By the way, I may be deluding myself, but I consider myself fairly anti-cheating and stuff, but I'm not sure I've ever considered this type of thing cheating. I mean, I rarely took place in it, but I can think of one instance. When my friend once asked me for one of my old tests, I gave it to him, and I don't remember struggling with it morally. I mean, at that point, it's kind of just another resource out there for you to track down. Obviously, you shouldn't break in and steal a professor's personal copy of a test or something, but if you get someone else's personal property to study from, that's not really cheating is it? If you're only using it to study and not to physically copy, and if they only got it by legitimate actions initially, I don't really see it as unfair. Does it change the situation if you know it's going to be the same (which, just for the record, I had no idea if she changed her tests or not)? Does it count as cheating if you talk to someone who took the class in a previous semester? (If it's the same semester, and they've already taken the test earlier in the day, I find that to be over the line, though I think in high school and earlier I was probably guilty of receiving a heads up or two or more and maybe giving some) They can collect them or change them if they are serious about it. Aside from that, as far as previous semesters go, I think once they put the test out there, it's out there unless they say keep this absolutely secret. Which is sort of where I come down on the Belichick thing, though not exactly in all aspects. But, from what I know, teams were explicitly told they couldn't do the taping, so it's clearly wrong.

This piqued my interest a bit more than usual possibly because I heard someone on espn2 say that his fraternity had a test file that collected tests from the various members throughout the years.
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jeremy.jpgJeremy - Super Chocolate Bear
01/04/2008 @ 10:35:24 AM
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I think Alex borrowed tests for that math class we were all in together. It is indeed a moral gray area, but I do know it doesn't because anymore, or less, of an offense if the professor catches on and punishes you for it.

Now as far as the coaching aspect of it is concerned, it was certainly a tactical mistake to do it against someone who knows all your secrets, and maybe THAT is what should be considered the mark against him coach-of-the-year-wise. On the other hand it may also lend a little more credence to the fact that he didn't know it was against the rules in the first place, not that that in and of itself (not knowing the rules in the first place) doesn't speak to his coaching as well.
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2887.gifAlex - I don't need to get steady I know just how I feel
01/04/2008 @ 01:08:50 PM
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I vaguely remember having borrowed materials for one class in college, but I thought is was earlier on than that. I think it somewhat depends on what you do with the test. If it's a multiple choice test and you just memorize A, B, A, D, C or write that down and sneak it in, that's cheating. If you just use it as a study guide, it's generally information that you already had available to you anyway, although you may be limiting the scope of what you need to study.

At any rate, I'm really not a big fan of writers taking moral stands in award voting, unless the award's specifications specifically include such requirements, so I'd have voted for Belichick too.

So Jon, Belicheck would be like a lvl 60 elite human coach with preparation and motivation spec?
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jeremy.jpgJeremy - As Seen On The Internet
01/04/2008 @ 01:15:26 PM
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Nerd.
leeroy-jenkins.jpg
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face.bmpCarlos44ec - 2079 Posts
01/04/2008 @ 03:37:56 PM
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... what the bleeding hell is that...
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fry6beeu9.jpgJeremy - 9475 Posts
01/04/2008 @ 04:19:10 PM
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vignette.bmpCarlos44ec - 2079 Posts
01/04/2008 @ 04:25:00 PM
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oh yeah, I saw that bit of geekery before. thanks

edit- you should enable that magic web master stuff and relocate this to where it belongs... :-)
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Carlos44ec perfected this at 01/04/2008 4:25:24 pm
sarah.jpgSarah - So's your face
01/04/2008 @ 07:40:01 PM
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Belicheck did know that he was not allowed to tape, all coaches were sent a memo prior to the incident. Just throwing that out there. A lot of people (before the award was handed out) thought McCarthy would win. Alas, twas not to be.
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avatar2345.jpgPackOne - Well you can get this lapdance here for free.
01/05/2008 @ 12:28:46 AM
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Just one more guy with a chip on his shoulder. Nice.
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jon.jpgJon - infinity + 1 posts
01/05/2008 @ 11:30:46 AM
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Alex Wrote - 01/04/2008 @ 01:08:50 PM
So Jon, Belicheck would be like a lvl 60 elite human coach with preparation and motivation spec?


That's exactly how I was going to put it.

Sarah Wrote - 01/04/2008 @ 07:40:01 PM
Belicheck did know that he was not allowed to tape, all coaches were sent a memo prior to the incident.


Commissioner: Hello, Bill. What's happening? We need to talk about your coaching.
Belichick: Yeah. The video tape. I know, I know. Uh, Bob talked to me about it.
Commissioner: Yeah. Uh, did you get that memo?
Belichick: Yeah. I got the memo. And I understand the policy. The problem is, I just forgot this one time. And I've already taken care of it so it's not even a problem anymore.
Commissioner: Yeah. It's just that we're not taping all the defensive signals now. So if you could just remember to not do that from now on, that'd be great. All right!


You see? He just forgot this one time. Get off his back.
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