|
Post by mylungswereaching on Jan 22, 2015 12:51:17 GMT -5
The deflationgate thing against the New England Patriots has me thinking, what is cheating in sports?
The rules of football basically say that teams must give their footballs to the refs 2 and a half hours before the game. The refs check and approve them. From that point on no one can tamper with the footballs. One hypothesis that seems to be possible is that the Patriots inflated the footballs with very warm air and gave them to the refs. The refs approved them. Once the air cooled the pressure in them dropped. No one tampered with the balls or even touched them in any way once the refs approved them.
In this scenario, the pressure was low but no one broke the letter of the law. There was no unnatural substance added to the ball, just ordinary but warm air. No one deflated the balls. They deflated because of nature, air pressure drops when air cools.
People say it would be against the spirit of the law but who determines what is the spirit of the law? In the original rules of football, the forward pass was illegal. Every time a quarterback passes the ball he is breaking the spirit of the original intent of the original rules of football.
Also, is there a difference between a rules violation and cheating? If a player holds a news conference wearing an MST3k t=shirt and it is against the rules of the sport, is that a rules violation or cheating? If it is cheating, should they forfeit the game?
A few years ago the patriots had another cheating scandal. Teams have taped games and practices for more than 40 years. The NFL put in a rule that said where teams could place their cameras when recording. The coach of the Patriots, Bill Belichick left the cameras in the same place that they always were. When he was told to move them, he arrogantly defied the league and left them there. He was justifiably punished for a blatant rules violation.
When I think of cheating, I think of the New Orleans Saints paying their players to intentionally injure their opponents. I don't think of things like someone wearing the wrong color underwear. That I call a rules violation.
|
|
|
Post by Phantom Engineer on Jan 22, 2015 18:04:01 GMT -5
The deflationgate thing against the New England Patriots has me thinking, what is cheating in sports? If a player holds a news conference wearing an MST3k t=shirt and it is against the rules of the sport, is that a rules violation or cheating? If it is cheating, should they forfeit the game? Of course that's not cheating. It wouldn't affect the outcome of a game. Illegal video spying, that's cheating.
|
|
|
Post by mylungswereaching on Jan 22, 2015 19:05:39 GMT -5
They call it spygate but what the Patriots were fined for was placing the camera in an illegal place. The kept a cameraman on the sidelines in addition to the cameras in the legal spots. Videotaping what they were taping was legal.The placement of the camera was illegal.I'm not sure why having a fourth of fifth different angle of the same play that they did't look at until after the game would have a seriously affect the outcome of the game. Coaches change their signals from game to game because they know that opponents have recordings. The fine was because BB was repeatedly told not to do it and he arrogantly ignored what the league told him to do.
From wikapedia:
"On September 10, 2007, Belichick was accused by the Jets of authorizing his staff to film the Jets' defensive signals from an on-field location, a violation of league rules."
"Page 105 of the 2007 NFL Game Operations Manual states, "No video recording devices of any kind are permitted to be in use in the coaches' booth, on the field, or in the locker room during the game"
There are lots of recordings of an NFL game. The coach just can't make one from the sidelines.
Is it a rules violation? Absolutely. Did they deserve the fine? Absolutely. Did one extra recording to view after the game give the Patriots a serious advantage? Doubtful.
When people think of spygate they frequently think of the allegations that the Patriots secretly recorded the Rams practices which were never proven. No evidence was ever presented to back up the claim.
IMO: Spygate can be considered cheating but its nowhere in the league of incidents like putting a bounty on players heads or the black Sox scandal.
|
|
|
Post by mylungswereaching on Jan 22, 2015 19:35:51 GMT -5
I live in New England. I used to play basketball outside in 45 or 50 degree weather a lot when I was younger. I've had a situation like this come up many times. I get up in the morning and grab my basketball in my room that was heated to about 85 degrees because my grandmother was cold if the temperature in the house was below 80 degrees. Her room was one of the coldest in the house. Mine the warmest. In a hot room, the ball was nice and firm. I carried the ball outside and played hoop for a while. Then I went home and left the ball in my car. An hour later I went back out and the ball was flat. I don't believe that someone broke into my car just to take the air out of my basketball. Balls I left in my car were almost always squishy in the winter. I always brought a pump with me so I could use them.
If the Patriots filled the ball in a hot equipment room using a pump that had been running a while, the ball and the air in the ball could easily be 40,50 maybe 60 degrees warmer that the air outside. Check the pressure when its hot, its fine. Leave it outside on the ground in a locked box for 2 1/2 hours and recheck the pressure. It will be low. Maybe they didn't know. Doubtful. They probably knew but since they never touched the balls after the refs checked them, they didn't violate any rules.
Is it cheating when you don't violate any rules?
I really only consider this cheating if someone used something like a pin to actively let some air out. If the pressure dropped because the temperature dropped I don't consider it cheating.
|
|
|
Post by Triple_sSs on Jan 23, 2015 13:36:03 GMT -5
Cheating is bad.
Richard Basehart is good.
|
|
|
Post by Mod City on Jan 23, 2015 15:11:59 GMT -5
If a team intentionally defies the rules to give themselves a perceived advantage, yeah, that's cheating. To me, that would include knowingly allowing the air pressure in the balls to drop below league-accepted levels, whether actively or passively. If that's the responsibility of the team, you make sure those balls are inflated properly when they're checked. Of course, if it's not done knowingly, that to me falls into the category of a rules violation. Good luck to anyone trying to prove what happened "intentionally." The best way to avoid being speculated as a cheater is to protect yourself from any and all hints of impropriety, especially after a disaster like Spygate. Keeping the footballs properly inflated is one of the easiest ways to do that.
Honestly doesn't matter to me. I have no dog in this fight. But holy god did Tom Brady seem guilty of something at his press conference yesterday. I'm guessing the NFL will level some kind of fine and that will be it. The NFL doesn't have the guts to go after the Patriots with a serious investigation, especially when they're on their way to the Super Bowl.
|
|
|
Post by Crowfan on Jan 24, 2015 9:57:22 GMT -5
I don't have a rooting interest in either team, but I did find this very funny.
|
|
|
Post by mylungswereaching on Feb 2, 2015 12:34:43 GMT -5
I think that the goal in sports is to win. Cheating is wrong but there are many situations were either the rules aren't clear or a team can follow the rules but not follow what some people consider the intent of the rules.
Let me give you a made up situation. There is a basketball league where all players must be under six foot tall. The rule for height states "All players must be under six foot in height," but there is no description on how they are to be measured. One team is dominant in the league and wins three championships in four years. They are looking for new players and find someone they like listed at 6 foot tall. They call him and ask him his height and he says a little under 6 feet. They call him in for a tryout and measure him barefoot and he is indeed 1/16th of an inch short of 6 feet. He ends up being one of the best players in the league for the first few games of the season. Then another team calls him out. The league measures him with his shoes on and he is over 6 feet tall. The team argues that since the rules don't say how to measure a players height, it should be his true natural height, not his height with shoes. The league disagree's and throws the player out of the league and fines the team heavily. Is this cheating? Should the coach be looked at as a cheater from this point on?
Spygate was a lot like this. BB firmly believed that what he was doing was legal. He continued taping openly (not secretly) against league rules because he didn't believe he was cheating. He was called on it. Until the inflation issue, it was the only blotch on his record. Now people are saying that he can't be trusted because of a long history of lies and cheating. What lies? He admitted he taped. Yes he broke the rules but he made no attempt to hide it and took his punishment.
|
|
|
Post by GarrettCRW on Feb 4, 2015 17:44:39 GMT -5
It boils down to people not liking Belichick because, well, he's not the most likable guy ever to the press. Factor in that the Seahawks and Pete Carroll have a much firmer history of cheating (plus a habit of talking way too much trash, which has bitten Richard Sherman squarely on his ass after this game), you really have to chalk up the vitriol towards hatred of Belichick and of Boston sports fans as the reason for Deflategate going as nuts as it did. Apparently, only 1 of the 12 balls was heavily underinflated, anyways, with the other 10 violating balls being "a few ticks under" the league specs. With the Colts' GM and Mike Kensil (who has definite reason to hate Belichick, since he likely lost his job with the Jets as a direct result of Belichick jumping ship to the Pats) at the center of the investigation, I think we need to ask if the whole thing is a vendetta against a highly successful but not entirely friendly coach.
|
|
|
Post by mylungswereaching on May 12, 2015 19:36:12 GMT -5
Ok, My take on the NFL's decision on the deflated balls issue.
1) The report said that the only way that the balls could be deflated is if someone did it. The ref's had enough time to test all of the Patriots balls. 9 of 10 were deflated. They only got to test 4 of the Colts balls. Two of four were deflated. By what the report stated, both the Patriots and Colts were deflating the balls. What is the punishment for the Colts going to be?
2) The NFL had enough evidence to punish the Patriots but I do feel that the punishment was excessive. Two games for knocking your wife to be out cold on camera and then the league lied about seeing the evidence but 4 games for deflating the ball. A clear cut make up call.
3) In the real world there are three kinds of rules. A) Rules that must not be broken and are regularly enforced, i.e. betting on sports. B) Rules that everyone forgot are there and no one cares about them. C) Rules that are there and people pay lip service to them but no body really cares about them.
Unions have a thing they call, work to rule. They just tell people to follow all of the rules. When employees follow all of the rules, companies grind to a halt. When I got my first jobs in my early twenties I really believed in following the rules. After I was fired from my first three jobs I figured out that managers don't really want you to follow all of the rules. My fourth job, I just followed the rules that made sense to me or that the manager told me that I had to follow. They loved me.
Another union place I worked had a rulebook over a thousand pages long. Many of the rules contradicted each other. To obey rule one you had to break rule two and vice versa. They used this to fire people they didn't like. If they wanted to get rid of you, they just kept writing you up for breaking the rules even though there was no way not to break them.
The rule against deflating the balls was a rule that the league payed lip service to for many years. It was obvious that they didn't really care about it. Spot check the balls a few hours before game time. Give the balls back to the team and then never check them again. The league sent clear signals that they didn't give a damn about the rule. According to multiple players, current and past, the rule has been regularly broken for years. The league and the Colts know that many fans around the league hate the Patriots. Catch the Patriots and only the Patriots breaking a rule that has been regularly broken for many, many years and punish them severely. Is it good for the game to play mind games? Probably not. But who cares, keep the fans happy.
|
|
|
Post by mylungswereaching on Jun 17, 2015 11:18:36 GMT -5
The Saint Louis Cardinals are being investigated by the FBI for hacking into the Houston Astros data base. I wonder if the fan reaction will be as rabid as the one against the Patriots? Will there be reporters and commentators demanding that the entire Cardinals front office be banned for life? Will they get a million dollar fine if the FBI says they probably, maybe did it but there really isn't any proof? I'll wait and see.
|
|
|
Post by timmy on Mar 6, 2016 9:35:53 GMT -5
i think of cheating in sports as the following: 1: bribing a ref/fixing a game 2: stealing a playbook 3: trying to hurt another player on purpose
also hate it when the NCAA goes after schools for things that happen years ago (like academic things).
|
|