WASHINGTON, D.C. Senator Arlen Specter accused the Boston Celtics of "cheating like a lazy fifth-grader on a geography test" in winning their seventeenth NBA championship Tuesday night, saying New England Patriots' head coach Bill Belichick filmed the Los Angeles Lakers' shoot-around prior to the decisive game six earlier in the day.
Specter: "There must be a grassy knoll around the Boston Garden somewhere . . ."
"This sort of dishonesty is contrary to everything America stands for, except for legislators who vote on bills that favor campaign donors," Specter said in a hastily-called news conference. "To those who claim I'm obsessed with bringing down Coach Belichick, I say you'd feel the same way about someone who is always stealing your yogurt from the refrigerator in the Senator's Lounge."
Belichick: "You watch--Kobe's going to shoot now."
Belichick was fined $500,000 in 2007 by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell for taping defensive signals of the New York Jets, a charge that the Patriots' coach did not dispute but which he said was due to a misinterpretation of the rules. "As I understood it," Belichick said at the time, "I was allowed to take video of [Jets' head coach] Eric Mangini to see who was doing better on our Weight Watchers Diet competition."
Belichick and Mangini: "Nice to see you, too."
According to Specter, Belichick's tape of the shoot-around enabled the Celtics to anticipate the Lakers' offensive plays in their 131-92 blowout win in Game 6. "You can see it in their defenders' eyes," Specter said as he rolled three metal balls in his hands. "They knew the Lakers' 'Give the ball to Kobe' play, their 'Clear out for Kobe play', and their 'Get yelled at by Kobe during a timeout' play."
Jackson and his "Triangle Offense"
Lakers' coach Phil Jackson said pre-game taping would help an opponent understand his complicated "Triangle Offense", which he has used to guide the Lakers and the Chicago Bulls to nine NBA championships. "There's no way the Celtics could have known that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the two other sides," Jackson said bitterly as he boarded a charter plane back to Los Angeles. "Unless they taped the practice or took high school geometry."
FOXBORO, Mass. With the announcement yesterday that a meeting between NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Matt Walsh has been arranged, insiders have begun to speculate on what hard evidence the former New England Patriots’ video assistant has to back up his claim that the team engaged in illegal taping as far back as 2002.
Matt Walsh
“What he’s got on tape is disturbing,” said a former employee of the team who preferred to remain anonymous. “Bill Belichick, in the shower, with soap on a rope.”
Brut Soap-on-a-Rope
Belichick became obsessed with soap-on-a-rope after the New York Jets defeated the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III in 1969, when Belichick was 16. Joe Namath, the Jets’ quarterback who brashly predicted the stunning upset, had been featured using Brut Soap-on-a-Rope in television commercials, and the two became linked in the aspiring coach’s mind. Belichick asked his parents for Brut Soap-on-a-Rope as a birthday present three months later, and has used the product normally associated with adolescent boys ever since as a good luck charm.
Namath: “It’s impossible to fumble soap-on-a-rope in the shower, even when the other guys blitz you.”
Walsh, a minimum wage go-fer for the Patriots, fell out of favor with Belichick following a summer camp scrimmage in which Belichick shouted out “right guard” after a blown offensive assignment. Walsh interpreted the coach’s command to refer to men’s toiletries, and subsequently gave Belichick a Gillette Right Guard boxed gift set that included deodorant, shaving cream and after-shave. Walsh was dismissed from the team shortly thereafter, and grew resentful of the $10.95 he had spent for nought.
Negotiations between Walsh’s lawyer and the NFL had dragged on as the league initially refused to provide legal protection to Walsh for his evidence. “There was a genuine concern that you’d expose your client to prosecution for pornography if you turned over a videotape of Belichick in the shower,” said Robert Bostrom, a professor of criminal law at Boston College Law School. “He wears that hoodie thing for a reason.”
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. New England Patriots' head coach Bill Belichick yesterday broke his silence on the allegations of improper filming of opponents that marred the team's 2007-08 season, saying the last film of another football team he had seen was "Knute Rockne, All American."
Belichick: "That's an incredibly stupid question, but I'll try not to answer it anyway."
"In my entire coaching career, I've never seen another team's practice film, family vacation film, or wedding film," Belichick said to reporters who asked about allegations by former Patriots' video assistant Matt Walsh that he had videotaped several house pets belonging to St. Louis Rams' players prior to Super Bowl XXXVI, and sold the film to "America's Funniest Home Videos."
"I want you to go out there and win one for the Gipper so we'll have home-field advantage throughout the playoffs."
Belichick has been diagnosed with Type-0 personality disorder, a psychological condition he contracted while an assistant coach with the New York Jets. Type A personalities are high-achieving, impatient, and aggressive, Type B personalities are patient, relaxed, and easy-going, and Type-0 personalities have zero personality measured by either the Celsius or Fahrenheit scale.
MGH Center for the Study of Zero Personality Disorders
"A Type-0 personality is the sort of guy who will refuse to buy an expensive bouquet for his wife on Valentine's Day, then wonder why she gets upset when he tells her how much money they saved," says Dr. Philip Reif of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
"All you Type-0 personalities out there, be careful driving home tonight."
Efforts to increase awareness of the disease have been largely unsuccessful, because no comedian has been willing to adopt the cause as his own. "Type-0 personalities are a hazard on the roads late at night coming home from comedy clubs," says Mike McMahon, who does stand-up in the Boston area. "They usually don't 'get' jokes until an hour after last call."
GLENDALE, Arizona. New England Patriots' wide receiver Randy Moss today asked an Arizona state court to grant a temporary restraining order requiring the New York Giants' safeties and cornerbacks to stay at least 500 feet away from him until the conclusion of Super Bowl XLII, and the judge assigned to the case took the request under advisement.
Curtis Montague Schilling Federal Courthouse, Glendale AZ
"The parties shall submit briefs in support of or in opposition to the motion by close of business Thursday," said Superior Court Judge Thomas W. Twohig, "and I will issue my ruling on or before 5:00 p.m. on Friday, which is when 2-for-1 Chalupa Hour begins at Eddie's Mexican Grille."
"Just stay away, dig?"
Moss is himself the subject of a restraining order handed down by a court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which requires him to stay at least 500 feet from Rachelle Washington, a woman who both agree is a "longtime friend" of Moss. "That's just how folks relate down here," said Eddie Jefferson, an acquaintance of the two. "You get a TRO against me, and I get a preliminary injunction against you. It's kinda like WASPy women give each other hostess gifts at a party."
"A permanent injunction? You shouldn't have!"
Patriots' head coach Bill Belichick said Washington's restraining order would not affect the team's game plan for the Super Bowl, the fourth in six years for the franchise. "We'll play a zone against her, which cuts out a lot of curl patterns," he said, drawing a diagram on a white board behind him. "If she tries to blackmail our wide receivers, we'll run crossing patterns over the middle."
Free the Chalupa 2!
Moss broke the NFL single-season mark of 22 touchdown catches in 2007, hauling in his record-breaking twenty-third score against the Giants in the final game of the season. Moss complained about illegal contact by the Giants' cornerbacks and safeties during the game, saying they cramped his style. "I like a sleek, padless look for playoff games," he said. "They made me look slow until I burned them for the go-ahead score."
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. New England Patriots' head coach Bill Belichick today issued an ultimatum to his starting quarterback Tom Brady, saying if this year's NFL Most Valuable Player did not show up for practice tomorrow he would not play in Super Bowl XLII next Sunday against the New York Giants.
Belichick: "No single individual is more important than the team--except me, of course."
Brady has missed practice for the past two days, allegedly because he injured his ankle in the AFC Championship Game against the San Diego Chargers. "A lot of guys will fake injuries when they want to spend time with their girlfriends," Belichick said in answer to a reporter's question regarding the harshness of the proposed punishment. Challenged to name one, Belichick, a student and historian of the game, shot back "Bronco Nagurski, Chicago Bears, 1936."
Bronco Nagurski
Belichick intimated that there could be harsher penalties in store if Brady fails to appear for the mandatory no-pads session tomorrow in the practice "bubble" next to Gillette Stadium. "If Tom doesn't play in two quarters of every game, he doesn't get his football letter," Belichick said. "And he can't put 'Varsity Football, '08' next to his name in the yearbook."
Uh, looks okay now.
There is speculation among Brady's teammates that the threat of lost varsity letter will be enough to coax the two-time Super Bowl MVP back to the practice field. "Tom really needs a new letter jacket," said his All-Pro defensive tackle Richard Seymour. "He gave his old one to Bridget Moynihan, and she won't give it back."
"C'mon, give it back--it makes you look fat."
Brady's current girlfriend, Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen, has been advised by the International Court of Dating Conventions that she is not legally "going steady" with Brady unless she has possession of either a letter sweater or a letter jacket with "Tom" embroidered on the sleeve. "I have told Tom to go to practice," Bundchen told reporters outside her Greenwich Village apartment in New York. "He is setting a terrible example for Pop Warner kids all across the country."
CINCINNATI, Ohio. New England Patriots' head coach Bill Belichick, known for his obsessive preparation for games, could be excused if he looked a little bit tired at Paul Brown Stadium here last night following his team's 34-13 dismantling of the Cincinnati Bengals.
"We've had a tough week watching a lot game film, but it paid off in a big way," was all that Belichick would say to a sideline reporter as he walked off the field.
At his post-game news conference a sportswriter asked Belichick, widely regarded as a defensive genius, whether he had found the Bengals' Achilles' heel in stifling their explosive offense. The usually reticent Patriots' coach dropped his guard and admitted that he had detected the flaw in Cincinnati's game.
"We watched hundreds of hours of film, often at slow motion, and discovered that their uniforms are ugly--I mean really ugly," he said, as reporters dutifully transcribed the words that would spark cries of foul from the Bengals' locker room.
"I've finally found a colorist I'm comfortable with."
"I don't know where he gets off saying something inflammatory like that," said Cincinnati's Chad Johnson, a wide receiver known for his pre-and-in game trash-talking who exacerbates the Bengals' loud orange and black color scheme with a tasteful, bleached-blond mohawk. "I try to be respectful of my opponent at all times and keep my thoughts to myself unless I have to point out that his shoe is untied or that his mother looks for love in horse barns."
"Them damn kids said I looked like an NFL coach . . . "
Belichick has himself been criticized for his taste in sideline apparel, as his signature grey "hoodsie" sweatshirt has been likened to a homeless man's winter wardrobe. "I find that really offensive," said Ellen Stritch, executive director of Cincinnati's Evening Outreach Shelter, which provides beds and meals to an average of 120 homeless men each night. "Every day I see men who have been neglected and forgotten by our society, and I rarely encounter one who looks as bad as Belichick."
The Bengals' uniforms have been described as what a Mighty Morphin Power Ranger wears on Halloween, but Kimberly, the Pink Power Ranger who hails from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, took issue with that comparison.
"Kids, if anyone offers you one of the grey tabs, don't take it!"
"It's more like what Tony the Tiger would wear if somebody sprinkled LSD on his Frosted Flakes."
FOXBORO, Mass. As the NFL levied multiple fines on the New England Patriots and their head coach Bill Belichick for filming the New York Jets' defensive signals last Sunday, insiders say the league has ignored evidence of cheating by the three-time Super Bowl winner for years.
Wesleyan University
"You know how he cuts the sleeves off his sweatshirts?" asked retired Rams' scout Mark Mortensen. "He started that when he was in college at Wesleyan. He'd write exam answers on the inside of his sleeves, roll them up during the test then cut them off afterwards to destroy the evidence."
The "sleeveless" sweatshirt.
As proof, Mortensen produces a Wesleyan sweatshirt with the numbers 1066, 1215, 1776 and 1941. "The first three are easy," he notes. "Battle of Hastings, Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence. The fourth is the tipoff that this is legit." How so, a reporter asks. "1941 was the year Don Faurot invented the split-T formation at Missouri."
Don Faurot: Inventor of the split-T formation.
Others who have known Belichick have come forward to corroborate the allegations made by Jets' coach Eric Magnini. "I played squash against him at Wesleyan," says Carter Wirtz, an investment banker in New York. "We were tied at 13 all when he nicked the tin on a reverse three-wall boast. I've never forgotten how brazenly he denied it."
"Practice hike--hike!"
Several of Belichick's boyhood playmates from Annapolis, Maryland say the man who is credited with bringing the "homeless" look to NFL sidelines was cutting corners before he hit puberty. "We were playing two-hand-touch-below-the-waist, three-Mississippi before you rush the passer, and Billy was always sacking me," says Ernie Weiss, now a local hardware dealer. "I finally figured out that he was abbreviating it to 'Miss.'"
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
