Belicheat Never Cheated? Oh Word?

From the NY Times.

BOSTON (AP) -- Patriots coach Bill Belichick broke his silence on New England's twin taping controversies, denying he told anyone to tape the St. Louis Rams' walkthrough before the 2002 Super Bowl and apologizing for all the attention generated by Spygate.

Belichick also told the Boston Globe he ''couldn't pick Matt Walsh out of a lineup.'' Walsh, a former Patriots employee, reportedly taped St. Louis' walkthrough practice the day before the Patriots beat the Rams 20-17 in the championship.

''In my entire coaching career, I've never seen another team's practice film prior to playing that team,'' Belichick said in a story posted on the Globe's Web site Sunday night. ''I have never authorized, or heard of, or even seen in any way, shape, or form any other team's walkthrough. We don't even film our own.''
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File Under: Don't You Have Anything Else to Do? Thanks...

WASHINGTON -- With the Super Bowl fast approaching, a senior Republican senator says he wants the NFL to explain why it destroyed evidence from the New England Patriots cheating scandal.

"I am very concerned about the underlying facts on the taping, the reasons for the judgment on the limited penalties and, most of all, on the inexplicable destruction of the tapes," Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., wrote Thursday in a letter to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

The story was first reported by The New York Times.

Specter, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the matter could put the league's antitrust exemption at risk. In a telephone interview with the Times on Thursday, he said the committee at some point will call Goodell to address the antitrust exemption as well as the destruction of the tapes.

Belichick - nice short shorts bro

Update!: New Information

One Last Think Piece for the Weekend From Moishe's Favorite Writer

Chuck Klosterman on ESPN.com

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While writing "Metaphysics," Aristotle outlined the three concepts of perfection as follows:

1. Something that is complete.

2. Something that is so good that nothing of the kind could be better.

3. Something that has achieved its purpose.
he '72 Dolphins were "perfect" by virtue of Aristotle's first and third definitions (the squad was a self-contained, untarnished unit that won the championship). The Patriots cannot make similar claims unless they win Feb. 3 (and if they lose, everything turns to smoke). However, they can already allege to embody that second designation of perfection: When one considers the advent of free agency, the salary cap, the enforced distribution of talent and the realties of present-day professional football, it's possible New England has built a team "so good that nothing of the kind could be better." Some of this was a product of chance (Brady was not drafted until the 199th pick in 2000), and some of this was a product of other teams' failures (the Packers could have acquired Randy Moss in 2007 for a third-round pick). But most of this has to do with the way the Pats perform: They have the most talent, combined with the most unselfishness, fueled by the greatest desire to unilaterally dominate. Their most consistent criticism has been running up the score against already humiliated opponents, a condemnation almost never applied to contemporary teams at the pro level. The Patriots are not literally perfect, but they are perfect enough to be historically singular.

Which is why it would be so much more interesting if they lose
Man o' War is arguably the finest horse who ever lived, and one of the best arguments for thoroughbred perfection. It is, however, very difficult to name any horse he raced against, except one: Upset, the only ungulate who ever beat him. This is how it goes. When measuring -- and particularly when remembering -- the greatest performances in the history of any sport, the moments that matter most are almost always tied to situations when that entity failed. Very often, those specific failures are the essential details people recall about dynastic achievement. The memory of perfection is inevitably tied to the memory of lost perfection.
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