Culture of Cheating

It's easy to pay the price via a lost draft pick, cash, or a suspension after you have won the Super Bowl and don't have to give the Vincent Lombardi trophy back. History is written, and the NFL has shown its incompetence in terms of taking action when it would have actually mattered - before the Super Bowl was played.     

The NFL, New England Patriots, Bill Belichick, Tom Brady, and cheating. These words have been bound together over the past decade, and perhaps even earlier. Whether it is spygate, deflategate, or something the Patriots have committed (but haven't been caught for), the verdict is clear - there is a culture of cheating in the New England Patriots organization and it is tolerated by the NFL's lack of decisive and appropriately harsh action.

If you're not cheating, you're not trying - that is the message prevalent in today's NFL, thanks to Roger Goodell and his degree of inaction at the time cheating occurs. Let's step back to the two weeks before the latest Super Bowl was played - there was enough evidence gathered by the Indianapolis head coach Chuck Pagano to conclude that the footballs have been tempered with by the New England Patriots in their match-up with the Indianapolis Colts before the Super Bowl. Chuck Pagano and his staff noticed irregularities with the footballs during the regular season and decided to alert the officials shortly before their playoff game was held. 

Despite a plethora of evidence against the Patriots, the NFL and the comissioner Roger Goodell decided to allow the Patriots to play for the title against the Seahawks, stating the the investigation would take place after the Super Bowl. Now, if you want to take decisive action to preserve the integrity of the game - you halt all festivities and work overtime to find out if the NFL equipment has been tempered with and the process of verification of football pressure has been violated before the game. Furthermore, if you find that the Patriots cheated before the game, it makes it that much more simpler to disqualify them from Super Bowl contention. 

That is the path you take, if you actually care about the integrity of the game and truly believe that cheaters never prosper. But that did not happen, and the Patriots wound up winning the Super Bowl over the Seahawks on the game's last play. The punishment has to be harsh enough to send a message that you can't win through cheating, as the first punishment for Spygate years ago did not seem to do the trick. After the game is played, unless you take away the Super Bowl title from the New England Patriots, suspend Brady and Belichick for the year (as they are multiple offenders), the only message you're sending to the rest of the league and the fans is - Cheating is a perfectly OK tactic to win the Super Bowl.

Cheaters never win... unless their owner is a really good friend of the NFL Commissioner.