Beli-cheat or Bally-genius?

I have to declare a personal bias here. In American football, I have supported the New England Patriots for twenty years. One result has been that this week I have been in a good mood, despite the horrible weather and a particularly frustrating business project. On Sunday night, the Patriots won the superbowl!

I was one of those who actually wanted to watch the game rather than the endless half time show or the ubiquitous adverts. For fans, the superbowl is the least satisfying game of the year because of all the distractions, unless of course our own team is involved.

It was an excellent game, close, decided with only twenty seconds left to play and with many subplots and examples of superb play. The reason I love the sport is because as many as half of all games during the season are like this, though of course the quality is better in the payoffs.

All the analysis of the game has focused on its decisive play right at the end, when Seattle made a questionable play call and suffered an interception, handing back the ball and consigning themselves to defeat when it looked almost inevitable that they would score and go ahead and in all probability win. It was wonderful drama, and indeed the play call looked wrong-headed, but I think commentators have missed the wider point.

In my opinion, New England won because of their coaches. They analysed Seattle and devised a game plan to beat them, whereas Seattle just turned up and played their regular game. Seattle are great at defending the run and long, classical passes, so Tom Brady threw fifty passes, nearly all of them short ones, and each one designed to create a favourable match up. Seattle did almost nothing during the game to respond to how New England played.

On the other side of the ball, New England knew that Seattle’s best weapons were their running game and their mobile quarterback, Russell Wilson. So they tried to contain both of those, at the risk of being more exposed to longer passes. Seattle played their regular game, and only adjusted when they got desperate. As it happens, when they started throwing longer passes they had success, thanks to some great skill but also a lot of luck.

So New England took small risks multiple times while Seattle took few big risks. The game was only close because Brady threw an uncharacteristic interception early in the game, and because an unlikely proportion of Seattle’s big risks started to pay off. It was ironic and even a bit fitting that Seattle lost the game by taking one little risk at just the wrong moment.

So the difference was coaching. Seattle probably had more talent. Seattle certainly had at least equal motivation. Pete Carroll and the front office do a marvelous job recruiting and motivating. But then they just played, while New England managed to engineer the game to get more from their talent than Seattle did.

At the heart of this lies Bill Belichick, long time coach of New England, and a man most people love to hate. His record is far and away the best ever in the NFL, despite the league doing everything it can to equalize teams; this means it can be argued that his record is unique across all sports.

Yet most people hate him, and even more don’t really respect him. Part of that is old fashioned jealousy – I steadfastly refused to think good things of Alex Ferguson against all the evidence because I simply hate Man U (and Liverpool). The Patriots fill that love to hate role for many fans in the NFL.

But with Belichick there is more to it. One reason is showbiz. US sports are set up to entertain, and I love it. Part of the entertainment is coaches being open with the media and being big characters. Pete Carroll of Seattle fits the bill perfectly – and huge kudos to him for being so big about that infamous call. Belichick, by contrast, is a curmudgeon.

Bill interacts with the media only when forced. He wears utterly unfashionable clothes. He speaks without really opening his mouth. He does little to hide his disdain for dumb people. He doesn’t work on being liked. He just focuses on what it takes for his team to win. So shouldn’t we look past ESPN, and respect him more for that?

The other problem with Belichick is a reputation for cheating. My teams have made a bit of a habit of falling foul of the law in the last ten years. In soccer I support West Ham, who have lost court cases over the Carlos Tevez illegal signing saga and just last week about Sakho playing during the African nations cup. The Patriots had spygate in 2007, and now deflate gate, about allegations that they intentionally deflated balls, still sub judice.

There are many ways to cheat in sports, and it is interesting to compare how they are judged. In my opinion, some types of cheating are much worse than others.

Perhaps worst of all are attempts to manipulate a result, like throwing a match for betting purposes. That completely undermines public trust in a sport and is tawdry. The Chicago baseball scandal of years and years ago is most famous in the US, but nowadays cricket looks very vulnerable. I am also surprised there is not more scrutiny of baseball and basketball, because both are vulnerable to spread betting.

Then there are acts of wanton violence. Surely these are worse then technical cheats, as they can end careers? Remember Nancy Kerrigan in ice-skating? But Wayne Rooney on occasion and other soccer players are arguably just as bad, even allowing for the heat of the moment. The New Orleans Saints offered a bounty to players for injuring opponents: they were penalized, but their coach stays in his job and is a media darling.

Performance enhancing substances can also ruin a sport. Cycling has lost all credibility, and I would never rehabilitate Lance Armstrong. Earlier we had Ben Johnson, and the whole shameful era in baseball. I have my doubts about how the NFL treats this subject still. With the very survival of the sport threatened by discoveries about brain damage, they should do much more than they do.

Then we get to deception of officials. Simulation in soccer is rife and I hate it – these players should suffer much more severe consequences than currently.

Next comes abuse of power. In this category I lump both the probable fraud in FIFA, the monopolistic behaviour of the Indian cricket board and the shameless bullying of people like Ferguson.

All of these categories do much more damage than technical cheating. Usually, technical cheating is very close to innovation: an attempt to exploit ambiguity in a rule to take the game forwards. Look at one-day cricket. Gradually, the rules have evolved, to outlaw bowling on the leg side, underarm bowling and placing all fielders on the boundary. The teams that used these tactics weren’t cheating, though they were all vilified at the team: they were simply being creative. Because they were trying to help their teams win games, and moving their sports forward at the same time, arguably they should be lauded not condemned.

As far as I can read, Spygate fell into this category. Many teams tried to read opponents signals, the law was ambiguous, and Belichick did it openly. He perhaps crossed a line when he did not check back with the league after they had written a letter about the subject. But really, was his behaviour as bad as that in the other categories? The sport was hardly tainted, and no-one could be injured.

If Deflategate proves intent to deceive, I may change my mind about the Patriots, but I am optimistic. Even if they are found guilty, I’ll have a good look at the evidence: the league certainly likes to get its own back on Belichick for his arrogance and curmudgenliness from time to time.

They should not be so dumb. Belichick does more to further the sport than anyone else. Media darlings are two a penny, real quality and innovation are much harder to come by. Don Shula and others should know better and shut their mouths.

Meanwhile, I’ll stay in a good mood as long as I can. Go Patriots! Go Hammers – even they are having an unusually good season. Now all I have to do is learn to party like Gronkowski.