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The Debriefing is a column that runs every weekday at 9:00 a.m. here on FanHouse. It goes deep into one issue and then bounces around to a plethora of smaller ones ... and does it all in a way that will make you feel like the prettiest girl at the cotillion. Bookmark this page, and visit daily.



Bill Belichick's reputation is that of a brilliant football genius in a ratty hooded sweatshirt.

But recent revelations about the way that Patriots do things could lead to the genius title being stripped ... and the trademark hooded sweatshirt going from the down-to-earth quirk of a brilliant man to nothing more than the standard attire of common thieves everywhere, whether they're stealing cash from liquor stores or signals from the New York Jets defensive coaching staff.

(Also at the bottom: ... The Rutgers football team may have improved, but the fans are still at the bottom rung ... We celebrate the fantastic news given to Kevin Everett ... and a ringing endorsement of Kanye West's new album ... )

The Patriots, of course, have won three Super Bowls (so far) this decade, and in doing so, have forged a reputation for themselves as the smartest and most noble team in the NFL. They have the smart players, the good character guys ... America went ga-ga over them when they chose not to be introduced as individuals before their first Super Bowl victory. They were a great big ball of wonderful.

And they still might be the smartest team in the league ... but not because they're out-thinking other players and coaches, but because they've found a way to cheat without being caught.

Until now.

ESPN reports that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has determined that the Patriots broke league rules before NFL security officials confiscated a camera and a videotape from a Patriots assistant who was believed to be videotaping the Jets defensive signals.

If it's true that the Patriots were engaging in such behavior -- and if they've been doing so for a long time -- then there's no punishment strong enough. It's clearly against league rules, clearly against the spirit of clean, honest, competition, and it tarnishes the legacy of the best dynasty in sports over the last decade.

If Roger Goodell chose to take back all three Lombardi trophies the Patriots have won in recent years (again, if the allegations are true), melt them down into a collection of sharp, tiny needles which would then be used to repeatedly poke the eyeballs and groin area of head coach Bill Belichick ... I couldn't say that was too harsh.

This is worse than a player using steroids. A player's primary weapon is his body ... his strength, his size, his speed. Even if he chemically enhances those attributes, he still has to take the field and make the plays.

A coach's primary weapon is his mind ... a coach's equivalent to a player doping would be a coach taking some kind of pill to increase his alertness and enhance his power of observation. But even if he was able to make his mind sharper, he'd still have to go out there and do the thinking.

The videotaping and stealing of signals, though ... that's having the work done for you. You no longer have to worry about calling the plays to put your team in a position to succeed, there's no chess match against the other coach, all the guesswork is eliminated ... you know exactly what the defense is going to do, and you respond to exploit it. There's no longer any skill there. Wayne Fontes and Rich Kotite could be labeled geniuses if they had that advantage.

A player's equivalent to this wouldn't be using steroids ... it would be using a taser gun to incapacitate an opposing quarterback.

Think about how easy it would be to beat a defense if you knew exactly what they were going to do. Once you get the team's signals figured out, a coach can spot them in the booth, and then radio them down to the quarterback, via that little green sticker on the back of his helmet ... it would take all of 3 or 4 seconds.

All the sudden, you wouldn't need a quarterback to be able to make any decisions on the fly ... a coach could tell him exactly where the blitz is coming from, allowing him to audible protection to that side ... he'd know exactly where the one-on-one coverage would be, or exactly where the soft spots in the zone would be. It would make things so much easier for an offense. Charlie Frye could be a Pro Bowler if you told him exactly what the defense was doing before the play.

Still, I can't pretend to know how much this has helped the Patriots, and I'm not suggesting that Bill Belichick and Tom Brady are just cheating versions of Wayne Fontes and Charlie Frye.

But these accusations are like steroid accusations in that respect ... no one can really know exactly how much of an advantage someone's getting because of them. Using everyone's favorite steroid example, Barry Bonds ... without (allegedly) using steroids, maybe he still hits 762 home runs, or maybe it's 425. No one can answer that definitively.

And maybe the Patriots still beat the Jets 38-14 if they stole signals or if they didn't. Maybe if they're not stealing signals, they still win, but by fewer points ... maybe they lose 14-0. Again, no one has the answer here.

And if this has been going on for a long time, maybe they still win 3 Super Bowls ... maybe they win 0.

Honestly, that feels like an overreaction ... but that's what cheating does. No matter how much or how little it's actually helped, it surrounds all accomplishments with doubt.

I don't think it's any great stretch to believe that this has been going on for a long time, either. The same assistant who had his video confiscated during the game against the Jets was caught doing the same thing last year in Lambeau Field.

"From what I can remember, he had quite a fit when we took him out," Packers president Bob Harlan told ESPN's Chris Mortensen. "We had gotten word before the game that they [the Patriots] did this sort of thing, so we were looking for it."

So the Patriots were caught doing the same thing last year against a bad team ... and at that time, that bad team had been tipped off by someone else that this was a habit of the Patriots.

I have no trouble believing that this has been going on for years (incidentally, neither do the Pittsburgh Steelers) ... if the Patriots are willing to cheat against a bad team in the opposite conference, it doesn't take a huge leap to think they'd be willing to cheat against everyone else, too. And let's face it, Bill Belichick is not known as the most honest of men.

I hope the league launches a full investigation into this, not just about the Jets game or the Packers game ... they need to figure out exactly how long this has been going on. If the Pats are innocent, or if they're not doing anything that every other team in the league isn't doing, then they deserve to be cleared and have their reputation restored.

And if it can be proven that they've done something illegal, and they've been doing it for a long time ... then they deserve to have the Goodell hammer of justice brought down forcefully upon them. If Pacman Jones gets suspended for a year for sullying the league's wholesome image in a Vegas strip club ... what's the appropriate punishment for someone who cheats to get an unfair competitive advantage on an NFL field, right under everyone's nose?





The Getty Images caption:

"The Phoenix Mercury team cake is seen in the locker room before Game Three of the WNBA Finals the U.S. Airways Center on September 11, 2007 in Phoenix, Arizona."

WNBA teams have team cakes? Suddenly, Eddy Curry feels like he's playing in the wrong league.

Did Diana Taurasi have to bake this herself? And those things that are drawn in icing on the corners of the cake ... are those are meant to represent the lanes on a basketball court? Because they look like something you don't find often in the WNBA.






Kanye West. I'm taking the rare detour from sports for a minute ... but if you still need that connection, there's a track on Kanye's new album, Graduation, entitled Barry Bonds. So there you go.

But as I was listening to the album today, I was thinking ... when's the last time a popular mainstream hip-hop artist released three consecutive albums that were all fantastic, were all different but still in the artist's comfort zone, and actually had something to say other than, "I like guns, money, and breasts"?

It just doesn't happen ... at least, it didn't, until Kanye released Graduation. There's absolutely no drop-off from Late Registration and College Dropout ... if anything, there's growth. It gets my full endorsement.



The Seattle Seahawks. Charlie Frye went from Week 1 starter to trade-bait in the course of two days, and most people seem to be focusing on how this affects the Browns QB depth chart, and Brady Quinn's starting chances.

What I'm wondering, though ... is why the hell anyone would trade for Charlie Frye. I'm guessing that no Seahawks employee has DirecTV's Sunday Ticket package, because if they had been able to see what Charlie Frye did against the Steelers on Sunday ... there's just no reason to give up a 6th round pick for that. Charlie Frye did nothing in that game that indicated that he even had the potential to one day be a terrible NFL quarterback.

Anyway, Cleveland signed Ken Dorsey to replace Frye, because I guess he's a good mentor for Brady Quinn (as his career numbers clearly suggest) ... I just can't imagine what the Seahawks saw in Frye that made them believe he's better than any number of free agent quarterbacks they could have signed off the street.



Deserving Of Your Full Attention ...

8:00, ESPN Classic. 2007: Appalachian State vs. Michigan. Charlie Weis should make his entire team watch this, just so they know that this coming Saturday, they can't take it easy, because there is a chance they could lose to a cream puff.

Other Stuff ...

7:00, ESPN. MLB. Atlanta Braves @ New York Mets.
10:00, ABC. NASCAR in Primetime.