Spygate - Rebuttals

I'm not going to offer background about the Spygate scandal because it's been well publicized enough over the past year. What I'd like to do is list some common arguments used against further investigation or prosecution and offer my objective rebuttals.

Some of these are idiotic, but again, I'm listing the most common arguments and sadly, the majority of sports fans are in fact idiots.

Common Arguments Against Further Investigation or Prosecution in the Spygate Scandal

1. 'Everyone else did it, so it's not a big deal' or 'Team X was using steroids back in the 19XXs'
This argument is used by some people to downplay the severity of the Patriots' rule violation. By saying 'hey, everyone else does it' the arguer implies that because other people did it, it is not wrong. The number of people that break a rule is irrelevant to the validity of the rule. It is, however, indicative of how strictly the rule is enforced. A rule is a very simple thing - it is absolute. In this case, the rule is in the form of 'X is prohibited'. Therefore if you do X, you broke the rule. If you and a friend did X, you broke the rule. If you and 1,000 people did X, you still broke the rule. The number of people that also broke the rule does not diminish the fact that each individual who did X broke the rule.

The other argument is similar - another team broke another rule and they were not punished. Once again, this argument is an attempt to divert attention from the current violation. It implies that because a prior violation was not prosecuted, the current violation should also not be prosecuted. Again, violating an absolute rule is black or white. The prior enforcement of the rule does not affect whether or not you broke it.


2. 'Doesn't Arlen Specter have anything better to do' or 'Why are our tax dollars being wasted on investigating the NFL' or 'Specter needs to spend his time trying to reduce the price of gas'

This is another diversion that attempts to question the character of the prosecutor. The arguer is basically saying the whistle blower should 'look the other way' because he or she has more important things to do. This is a diversion because it attempts to lead your focus away from the absolute nature of the rule and instead question whether or not the rule should be enforced. The nature of the rule is absolute, whether or not a certain person should be devoting time to enforcing the rule does not change whether or not a violation has occurred.

3. 'Matt Walsh is just a disgruntled employee who is out for revenge on Belichick and the Patriots'

This could be the case. Who knows? But Walsh has provided evidence in the form of videotapes and unless they are fabricated you cannot ignore the evidence. His words and intentions may be biased but the evidence he provides is objective. Evidence is objective by nature and is not affected by human bias unless it is tampered with.

4. 'The Patriots would have been just as successful without illegally taping their opponents'
This is like the first argument which tries to diminish the severity of the rule violation. This argument does not deny that violating the rules gave the Patriots an unfair advantage, but it states that the advantage was not decisive enough to change the eventual outcome. Basically it's saying 'things would have turned out the same without violating the rules so therefore the rules violation wasn't a big deal'.

My counter to this argument is we don't know how things would have turned out without violating the rules. Football is often called a game of inches and there is absolutely no way to go back in time and know how things would have played out under different circumstances. Again, I keep coming back to the same point. The absolute nature of the rule remains unchanged. This is simply another attempt to say 'breaking the rule wasn't a big deal'.

5. 'Taping their opponents never gave the Patriots an unfair advantage'
This argument is similar to the previous one. It admits the rule was broken but that breaking the rule didn't really affect the outcome of the situation. If this is true, that means the rule is ineffectual. But one should assume rules are in place for a reason and therefore when they are broken the outcome is affected.

Another counterargument is that if the Patriots really gained no advantage from taping their opponents illegally, why did they continue to do it for so many years while taking the risk of being caught? People don't consciously violate rules for years and years unless there is some benefit which outweighs the risk of being caught.

6. 'The Patriots were already fined $$$ and lost a draft pick, this should put an end to the scandal'

This argument says 'we were caught red-handed, we were punished and that should be the end of it'. I agree, that should be the end of it, if no further violations are revealed. In this case, the Patriots were found guilty of violating the rules in 1 particular game and they were fined and punished for that infraction. However, since that punishment was assigned, new details revealing further infractions have sprung up. Therefore, a new series of punishments should be assigned for the new charges.

Imagine a man is arrested for trespassing and is subsequently jailed. While he's in prison it's discovered his person contains several pieces of stolen jewelry as well as some illegal drugs. The judge doesn't say 'well, you were in jail anyway for trespassing so that's enough punishment'. Separate punishments would be handed down for each individual violation.

7. 'You people are just Patriot/Belichick haters'
This is another argument about bias. It's a way of the arguer saying 'I'm not going to listen to anything you say because I think you are biased'. It's the rhetorical equivalent of sticking your thumbs in your ears. As I stated before, people are biased but evidence is not. If you refuse to accept evidence because it was brought forth by someone you perceive as biased you are excluding objective elements of the scenario.

8. I actually support further investigation but they should investigate EVERYONE.
This is a deceptive argument because it actually starts out by supporting more investigation. However, this is really a variant of argument #1 - that everyone else did it. The arguer hopes that if further investigation is done on all teams, it will reveal that the Patriots were not the only team that broke the rule. Then by the false logic of argument #1, the violation of the rule is not as big of a deal because multiple teams committed that violation.

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Those are all the arguments I'll discuss for now but I'm sure you've recognized a very common theme in all my rebuttals. I feel like I'm repeating myself over and over again but that's the nature of this type of situation. All the arguments I've listed above are merely diversions from the simple nature of an absolute rule.

You may not do X.

You either did X or you didn't do X.

You did X, therefore you violated the rule.

Period.

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Before the Spygate scandal emerged Bill Belichick was unanimously considered a 'genius' by football fans of all teams. The Patriots were the closest thing to a dynasty of the 90s-00s and their success was undeniable. The unfortunate thing for Belichick and the Patriots is that this revelation of cheating has called into question all of their achievements. There is really no way to know how much of their success was due to the genius of Belichick or the quality of the team's play.

This situation would be like discovering that Charles Dickens plagiarized some of his work without knowing which works were plagiarized. It could be one passage in one book or it could be all his work. In this example it would be more feasible to distinguish Dickens' work from the stolen material. Belichick, however, is not so lucky. Football victories cannot be parsed into discrete units like Dickens' books.

Here's an article from a Boston newspaper which elaborates more on the topic.