Is Spygate still a relevant discussion?

They just remind me of the old 9ers teams that were so dominant w/ Montana(Brady although he needs 1 more ring) and Rice(Moss, but don’t get it twisted. Rice is one of the best football players ever). To get on subject I think talking about Spygate is as irrellevent as talking about the Steelers of the 70’s roiding like crazy. Who cares anymore. You still have to play the game. I take the 2002 Super Bowl of the Raiders vs. Bucs for example. The Bucs new every play the Raiders were calling. But they still had to stop em right? You still have to play the game. I think the Roid issue in the 70’s had a larger effect on football than video taping a game or practice. In actual gameplay, a lot of players especially the vets know before the snap what the offense is calling or planning to do because they can read the formations and they study nonstop. That’s all gravey but you still have to execute and stop them. You can video tape all day and all night but you still have to execute.

Look around the league and see how many players are traded within each division the reason is three-fold:
1) They see the competitors more and therefore have more info on them.
2) Taking a good player who gives you problems (Wes Welker) from a competitor (Dolphins) makes them weaker and you stronger.
3) They give you info on the opposition. They are expected to spill their guts and they do.

Every team does it and it is cheating, but it is legal

WE shut them up once we rattled off 18 games in a row and should have been 19.. But thats ok we went out and won everyone of those games with everyone watching.. But it was still cheating somehow we still cheated even though we did it with everything being looked at through a microscope. It was funny and enjoyable to watch and to shut up the cry babies. I hope this yr we do what they say is the impossible.. Rattle off and finish what we began that yr and go 19-0.. It will silence all those idiots that say we cheat and if not well… Then at least we can laugh in their faces and truly cement it in concrete as the team of the decade.. Even though i already believe that it is already proven…

And I really think we can see it in perspective now. Of course the Patriots benefited somewhat from it – or they thought they did – otherwise they wouldn’t have taken the time and effort to do the filming.

Was it instrumental in making the Patriots a great team? No, it takes a hell of a lot more than that. Maybe some game, somewhere was won because of it, but there is really no way of knowing it.

And that is of course the annoying thing. Patriots fans can forever say, that it didn’t matter at all, and other teams can claim that it did, and there is no way of stopping it, because at the end of the day, we just don’t know how much it meant. If people just yells CHEATERS!! all the time, it just gets boring, which is why the ESPN boards are mostly a waste of time. Lots of trashtalking and people yelling at eachother without any exchange of ideas.

Now, the Patriots’ success had a lot more to with talent, coaching, execution and – let’s face it – luck than it had to do with cheating, but there is just no way around the fact that they were caught with their hands in the cookie jar. They DID cheat. Others may have done the same or something worse, but it doesn’t change the fact: They did cheat.

As a fan, you don’t stop loving your team because they cheat, much like you don’t stop loving your children if they are caught shoplifting or care for your friends if they are pulled over for DUI. But it does change the way you see them. How could it not? I still admire Belichick and the Patriots for what they accomplished but of course I see them differently after Spygate. But that is the point about caring, really caring, about something. You got to embrace it all.

was about the biggest farce in league history. Never has there been such a big deal made about nothing.