Spygate: I Believe Bill Belichick

"[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 it pretty much created in the first place; Specter complained that Roger Goodell and the league weren't willing to give full disclosure: "If they had wanted [former Patriots video assistant Matt] Walsh to talk, it would have been done a long time ago. They are not helped by keeping him on ice, unless they intend to [permanently] keep him on ice."

Reportedly, New York Jets officials and Damon Huard (!) have refused to speak with Specter on the matter. Specter wanted testimony from these guys because of their former affiliation with the Patriots, but one can't help but wonder if Jets, Chiefs, and folks from about, say, 29 other franchises would prefer to go the Barry Bonds route and duck hearings altogether.

The truth is, in the high-pressure world of big-money football, anyone and everyone will use any advantage at their disposal to stay (or get) on top and there is just no way every NFL team outside of New England is playing 100 percent by the rules. Doesn't anyone remember Brian Billick's accusations against the Jets on similar grounds early this season?

Yeah, the Michael Vick thing was terrible, but at least it was an easy call morally speaking—except for banal cultural relativists like Whoopi Goldberg, it seems. Who really wants the stickiness of seeing one team after another go under senatorial inspection on C-Span?

And trust me, I know how unsavory it is to have to buy The Hooded One's Nixonesque trash talk. But look at the players: Let's see, we can side with grandstanding politicians led by Specter, who is not at all motivated by his legendary love for the Philadelphia Eagles; the NFL commissioner, a figurehead whose primary job consists of protecting the rights of a few dozen billionaires against a few hundred millionaires in the quest to soak you of as much of your hard-earned cash as possible; the owners, who, to paraphrase Lieutenant Worf, "don't allow themselves to be ... probed"; and ol' Romulan commander Belichick himself.

"I have never authorized, or heard of, or even seen in any way, shape, or form any other team's walkthrough," said the coach in The Globe. "We don't even film our own. We don't even want to see ourselves do anything, that's the pace that it's at. Regardless, I've never been a part of that."

Guess I have to buy it—I'm not that big a fan of congressional hearings.

Ready, willing, and waiting to probe throughout the year at RealFootball365.com