Football Cheating–How bad is it?

OK, all we hear about in baseball these days is who’s “juicing”, who’s on the “list”,  steroids, steroids,  blah, blah. … I’m sick of it and I don’t even follow baseball that closely.  And football fans all remember the football cheating “scandal” in New England. And the NFL laid it on Coach Belichick and the Patriots.  So the question comes to mind,  “Is this an isolated incident or is cheating going on more often in professional football?”

Football coaches have been speaking into their headsets behind laminated playcards for several years now. And Mike Holmgren of the Seahawks says that it’s partly due to eyesight. Yeah right! And in all sports, it seems like it’s a contest to try and steal signals. Look at baseball for instance (as much as I hate to).

Coaches at both the pro and collegiate level have always been known for their paranoia, but I think that many football fans thought that it was just that…paranoia. The Patriots episode left many of us rethinking this issue. Especially after I saw LaDainian Tomlinson talking in a TV interview and he was saying that he wasn’t surprised at all by the Patriots “cheating”. Of course we know that there is some bad blood between LT and the Patriots, but to go out on TV and say that gets me to wondering.

Then there is the question of this: Is it cheating or just pushing the edge of the envelope? Professional football (and college football as well) is so competitive these days, so every team and every coach is looking for the competitive edge. So video taping the opponents sideline is illegal, but what about just having a coach watching from the booth or the sidelines and lip reading? Where is the line?

Holmgren said that a few years ago he was watching a game on television and was able to clearly able to read the lips of one of the coaches and knew the call that he made. This was made a little easier by the proliferation of the West Coast offense and its’ variations that so many teams run. And as more and more assistants move into head coaching jobs as time passes, aren’t a lot of the teams doing a lot of the same thngs? So what really is cheating and what is just competitive aggressiveness?

Commissioner Goodell was clear on this one issue with the fines and penalties that he laid on the Patriots football team and Belichick. But I am not clear on where the line really is. And I don’t know if many football fans or media could agree on where it is.
So are all the football coaches in the NFL and NCAA now going to be super paranoid from here on out? For example, I remember coach Mark Richt of the University of Georgia (GO DAWGS!)  closed his football practice while preparing to play Alabama in a key SEC matchup a couple of years ago.  A pretty common practice for key games, playoffs, etc.

But will things now escalate to where there now be counter spying going on to catch the “cheaters”?  Will teams put more and more effort into being even sneakier or into catching other teams’ spys?  And just how much of this is really going on?  Are most coaches not going to break some sort of “code” as Mangini did when he turned in New England?

I don’t know if there is a huge problem with all of this. But it was interesting to hear former Dallas Cowboys coach Jimmie Johnson say that “90 percent of the coaches in this league are paranoid because they’ve done something themselves”. And just what is “something”? Johnson didn’t elaborate.

I don’t have any real answers, more questions than anything. But I wonder if this new NFL season will bring this issue back?  If people have been laying low, but are bringing out he cameras again.  And I am curious who will be the next “busted” coach.