I rarely agree completely with what Gregg Easterbrook has to write in his articles, but that’s understandable. TMQ is long. Easterbrook is a liberal that doesn’t shy away from government solutions to problems. Put the two together and you’re going to get some disagreement here. I’m fine with that. In fact, I frequently read his column because it’s one of the better reasoned explanations of the “other side” and it has the advantage of being sugarcoated with sports and cheerleader pictures.

How can you go wrong?

Then he posted this:

Belichick’s cheating could lead to dark days for NFL

The situation with the National Football League is a lot worse than people realize, and the only one who seems to grasp this fully is commissioner Roger Goodell. You don’t issue emergency orders backed by threats on Sunday morning of a game day, as Goodell just did regarding the New England Patriots’ files of cheating information, unless the situation is a lot worse than people realize.

Why is the situation worse than people think? Because the NFL is on the precipice of blowing its status as the country’s favorite sport. The whole NFL enterprise is in jeopardy from that single word: cheating. It’s the most distasteful word in sports. And now the Patriots have brought the word into the NFL.

Two paragraphs in and I’m already riled up. Let’s take a look at how the NFL’s competition is holding up, shall we?

- Baseball has suffered from almost fifteen years of problems. The most serious one today is that baseball has a drug problem. Many players have tested positive for steroids. Other players have been linked to HGH sales; HGH, by the way, can’t be tested for. Meanwhile, they have a player’s union that absolutely refuses to cooperate with anyone on this subject or any other subject that management might have any opinions on, which ties into the problems that baseball was experiencing in the mid-90s.
- Basketball had a referee get caught fixing games and involving himself in a gambling ring. Cheating is one thing; teams can stop that anytime. When referees start fixing games, though, you might as well call yourself “organized wrestling”. Meanwhile, the NBA’s best personality, best player, and most marketable asset is playing in Cleveland in a weak division with a lousy team.
- Hockey so completely overplayed their hand with the American people that it’s not even funny. The only reason they’re more relevant than professional soccer in this country is because professional soccer is completely irrelevant here.
- Boxing? You’re kidding, right?
- Speaking of a drug and credibility problem, wrestling is starting to slip past boxing in irrelevancy.
- College sports are only relevant to those that went to college, and only to those that went to those colleges where sports are relevant. That’s not most colleges. This does not necessarily apply in places like Nebraska and most of the South, but that’s because they’re the only game on in those places. Plus, if you want to talk about crookedness, it doesn’t get much worse than “amateur” sports.
- NASCAR might be the one sport that has the capability to at least sniff the NFL’s behind in ratings and popularity if things go horribly wrong. However, though NASCAR’s appeal has been broadening, I suspect it has a long way to go to get up there. Plus, NASCAR has had its fair share of cheating problems as well, mostly related to arcane car configuration rules and the like. Also, if you think people have a problem with players getting concussions, how do you think people are going to feel about the one of the strongest personalities in the sport dying in a high-speed crash? These are people driving cars in excess of 200 MPH. I don’t care how much safety equipment you put them in, sooner or later, somebody’s going to die out there. It’s called physics.
- Golf is pointless without Tiger Woods and everyone knows it.
- Women’s sports are only interesting to most sports viewers when incredibly attractive women in skimpy outfits are involved. Think women’s tennis and the LPGA. For further proof of this rule, think of the complete lack of popularity for the WNBA.

Of those on the list, who is going to compete against the NFL? With the possible exception of NASCAR, every other sport on that list has far bigger problems than the NFL right now. That alone led me to disagree with Easterbrook. The following paragraph, however, damn near made me want to throw something across the room:

Michael Vick tried to deny and stonewall, but at the last owned up and admitted what he did. That’s dignity. Belichick is now using weasel words to deny responsibility for his own choices. What kind of example does that set for the young? “Make good choices,” football coaches constantly preach to the young. Now, caught, Belichick wants a special exemption to responsibility for his own choices. Belichick also is trying to close the matter by saying he won’t talk about it anymore. So he cheated and now unilaterally declares the matter closed because he doesn’t want to face the consequences of his own choices. But this is not over and not going away. Before the cheating scandal, Belichick had a reputation for being heartless but a really good coach. Now, he seems little more than a creepy con artist, and it’s the refusal to act like a man and take full responsibility that’s really offensive. Goodell’s draft-choice penalty against the Patriots – either a first or a second and a third – is the highest draft penalty ever imposed in the NFL. The severity of this sanction shows how seriously Goodell takes the violation. If more disclosures are coming, there might be a lot more punishment of the Patriots. And unless Belichick comes clean and stops lying about his cheating, this event should disqualify him from consideration for the Pro Football Hall of Fame – it is, after all, not the Hall of Cheaters.

Wait a second. Michael Vick owned up to what he did only after his lawyers told him that, if he didn’t, he’d be spending more than a year or two in prison for committing felonies. He owned up because it made good legal sense to do so. Belichick did not commit a federal felony. Belichick also did not raise animals to fight for the amusement of himself and his friends. Belichick also did not run an illegal gambling ring designed solely to wager on the actions of said animals. Furthermore, Belichick did not kill any animals after they failed to perform in illegal fighting rings run by him to support an illegal gambling ring run by him. So, comparing Vick to Belichick is ridiculous.

As for Belichick’s impression on the young… oh, why won’t somebody think of the children? In the spirit of Godwin’s Law, I’d like to create the Colborne Corollary. It goes a little something like this:

As a discussion about a mistake or action exhibiting poor judgment grows longer, the probability of someone expressing concern about how the mistake or error in judgment will affect children approaches one.

Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve reached it! There’s just one problem - Belichick doesn’t coach children. He coaches grown adults. He’s not a developer of talent, a la your traditional high school or college coach. His job is to retain talent, keep it from injury, and harness it to win football games. That’s it. I’d be more concerned if it was a college or high school coach pulling something like this. That said, Easterbrook may have a point here - Belichick may not get into the NFL Hall of Fame, at least not on the first ballot. We’ll have to see how the Patriots do this year. Furthermore, I always was fuzzy on why being truthful and confessing to wrongdoing would absolve you of any of the consequences of what you did. If it’s wrong, it’s equally wrong whether you owned up to it or not. Consequently, at least from where I’m sitting, the punishment should be identical whether Belichick is honest about his involvement or not.

That’s enough for now.