Spygate: I Believe Bill Belichick

Another page in the continuing saga of Spygate, ran on the pages of that great unbiased media source, The Boston Globe, last week.

"[In my] entire coaching career, I have never filmed a walkthrough," said New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick. "I've never been on a staff that has filmed a walkthrough. I'm talking about when I was a head coach. As an assistant, I've never seen a head coach film a walkthrough the day before a game..."

Everyone scoffed, tittered and guffawed, but I'll tell you what: I believe Belichick.

Why? Because I have to. Because I was living in New Mexico during Election 2000. Stay with me here for a moment and I'll explain.

Every American citizen (and quite a few living abroad as well) clearly recalls sitting president George W. Bush's, um, closely fought election victory that year. Thanks to the mechanics of the Electoral College, Al Gore was in a position to earn more popular votes while still losing the general election. Everyone knows what happened (or didn't happen) next, as folks in 49 states and the District of Colombia saw the same red-and-blue board on CNN for days and weeks thereafter while recounts went on and on.

The Sunshine State wasn't the only disputed state in that contest, however. You may recall how Oregon stayed off the map in neither Bush nor Gore's column for about two weeks; this was thanks to that state's mail-in ballot procedure and an ultra-close race there.

And then there was New Mexico. Originally given to Gore on election night, three days into the Florida vote recounts, on all the scoreboards, the Land of Enchantment was bleached as officials declared the state's balloting may have been compromised; a recount had been called for in my home state as well, a little-noticed event, as like Oregon, New Mexico did not have enough electoral votes to swing the presidency into either camp.

Two days later—four after Election Day—those turning on CNN may have noticed that the Southwestern state had in fact gone red: After a recount, New Mexico had voted Bush, it seemed, by a margin of some 200 votes or so. Twenty-eight days after Election Day, though, New Mexico had miraculously swung back into the Gore camp, with the Wooden One proclaimed the winner of a state of 1.2 million by 366 votes. For those keeping score at home, the problems included:

• Improperly programmed voting machines in Albuquerque, the state's largest city.

• Missing ballots, later "found" by election officials in "a back room in a warehouse."

• Police impounds of ballots.

• Incorrect programming of voting machines in another county of the state; and finally

• A "misread" handwritten tally of absentee ballots which gave Gore another 500 votes and the victory.

Over the four weeks this was going on and as Gore refused to concede defeat, rumors circulated. There were rumors of improprieties in Ohio, that machines had malfunctioned in Alaska, that basically every state in which the final tally was close may have required a recount. Gore ultimately conceded and was called a hero in some quarters (even some outside of Michael Moore's realm) for saving America and "the process" a little embarrassment on the international front.

The point here is this: If Arlen Specter is allowed to get his hands on the Patriots and investigate allegations of illegal use of video technology, he's going to find this sort of stuff all over the league. This would be tantamount to investigating Jose Canseco for steroid use, under the assumption that he was the sole baseballer in the 1990s to have been juicing.

Or, as my lady put it when I tried to explain the allegations to her (hey, she went to University of Berkeley and still thinks the San Francisco Giants are the big city's football team), "Well, couldn't anyone with a cell phone do that?"

Last Friday saw the Worldwide Leader in [American] Sports fan the embers of the story

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