Entertain Me Now! I Don’t Care How!

For those not 'in the know' as far as pro football goes, a former New England Patriots employee has come out of hiding (i.e. playing golf in Hawaii) to say that he has info about what the Patriots have done in the past (as far back as 2000) as far as videotaping defensive signals and using them to win games, and that Head Coach Bill Belichick's previous claim that he "misinterpreted the rule" is completely false. When Walsh met with NFL commissioner Goodell, Goodell gave a statement that pretty much said, "This guy didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. I'm not going to punish the Patriots any further than I already have. Everything is A-OK." However, when Walsh met with PA Senator Arlen Specter, Specter wanted an investigation into the matter and released a rather large statement on what he learned from Walsh. Now, I admit there are some things in the statement that seem kind of overkill. For example, the claim that the Patriots filmed offensive signals….what offensive signals? Maybe they are referring to offensive formations, I don't know, but that part doesn't make sense.

My point in all this, however, is not about the Patriots or Matt Walsh at all. It's about the flippant attitude of the general public that I am seeing in the comments on various NFL news websites. Everyone says, "This is stupid, can we just get this behind us, all teams cheat, Specter's just mad because New England beat the Eagles in the superbowl, Specter is doing this because he gets money from Comcast and Comcast doesn't like the NFL/NFL Network, this is conspiracy theory, nothing wrong was done, etc. etc."

If everyone cheats, that's not grounds for not punishing the Patriots, it's grounds for punishing/penalizing everyone that cheats! Why does no one care that the games being enjoyed are not genuinely competitive? Because we all just want to be entertained. Who cares if the wins are legit? Why do we have to listen to all this serious stuff? I just want to watch football, even if all the teams cheat to get ahead. Some people would say that since all the teams cheat (which I don't think is true by the way) that no one actually gets an upper hand by cheating and so should not be punished. That's the most inane, ridiculous thing ever. You don't punish the team because they gain an upper hand by cheating! You punish the team because they cheated regardless of the result of said cheating! If a group of students cheat on an exam, but only one actually gets an A, you don't punish that one student because he got an A and the others who cheated didn't. You punish all of those who cheated…because they cheated. OH, but punishing the Patriots or Belichick would disrupt our entertainment, we'd rather watch a good cheating team than some teams that genuinely want to compete…well, boo hoo for you.